


Wolf in the Den of Lions

by Dead_Waltzer



Category: The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-18
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24259000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dead_Waltzer/pseuds/Dead_Waltzer
Summary: Annabeth Chase never quite trusted Jason Grace. It could have been that he was too perfect, too quiet, or perhaps that he claimed to be the long-lost younger brother of one of her oldest friends. That, and that false memories tended to follow him wherever he went.{Most likely Jason/Annabeth and probably Percabeth in some capacity as well. Side Leo/Piper. An alternate set of events transpire on Argo II's way to Camp Jupiter.}
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Jason Grace, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson, Piper McLean/Leo Valdez, Probably - Relationship
Comments: 7
Kudos: 26





	1. Argo II

**Author's Note:**

> {This is as much as I have done. It was supposed to be short, but I realized that I can't very well write a short Jason/Annabeth piece. So I made it a bit longer than I thought I would. I'd definitely like to continue, but I decided to just post what I have for now.
> 
> I also have lost my copy of Mark of Athena, so I apologize in advance for any inaccuracies ^_^. If I catch any, I will make sure to correct them.}

Annabeth rubs her eyes tiredly and looks over at Leo, standing hunched over the Argo II’s controls. 

“How is tonight looking, Valdez?” she asks. Leo scrunches his brow and glances over at her. 

“Uh, like are there gonna be any dragons or evil pegasi that ambush us in the night?” he says, and she can’t tell if he’s joking or not. He leans over the keyboard monitor and studies it carefully. “I...don’t think so?”

Rousing herself and stumbling over to the refrigerator, Annabeth grabs at another ice-cold can of Mountain Dew and fumbles with it, fingers shaking.

“Hey, uh, Annabeth?” Leo says as she cracks open the can and takes a sip. “You don’t _have_ to be on watch with me right now. I just woke up an hour ago-- I can take this shift.”

Annabeth sighs sharply, taking another swig of Mountain Dew. She’s been nervously chewing the inside of her cheek raw for a few days and nights in a row, now. The carbonated water stings against the torn flesh in her mouth, but hey, that’ll keep her awake too. “I told you, Leo. I need to be up to monitor the ship’s scans while you control it. Or vice versa. Think of it as being a, uh, copilot.”

Leo rolls his eyes. “Alright, but you’re a real shaky copilot. How about you wake up Jason? Piper had the shift before you, but I think Jason’s been out for eight hours or so now. Also, he’s the son of Jupiter-- he’ll probably be good with, you know, dangerous flying thingies. If it comes to that.” 

Jason. Annabeth hesitates for a moment. Of all the current Argo II crew, Jason is probably the one person she has the hardest time talking to. She shouldn’t, she thinks, it really isn’t fair to the guy. On the surface, he seems like the most dependable of the trio she’s come to know in the past few months: responsible, level headed, straightlaced beyond belief. He strikes her as incredibly mild mannered for the son of Jupiter, but maybe that’s part of what makes her uneasy. 

That, and the fact that he insists that he’s the younger brother of one of her oldest friends. Jason looks and acts nothing like Thalia, who never mentioned him to Annabeth, even when Annabeth was about his age growing up. And even if Thalia has confirmed to Annabeth that it’s true, false memories have a tendency to accompany Jason wherever he goes. (Piper and Leo, for their part, still seem to accept Jason as their best friend and boyfriend, respectively. Annabeth can’t understand that, either, not caring about the fact that your history with someone is a lie, but she would be the last person to tell them that.) Yes, Jason Grace makes her very uneasy.

Briefly, Annabeth wonders about Percy. What has Hera tried with him? Does he remember her, or does he think of himself as totally Roman? Does he have a fake girlfriend that Hera ‘s inserted into his life? The thought makes her tremble. If it isn’t the caffeine from the soda she’s been consuming dutifully for the past few hours making her tremble, anyways.

“Uh, Annabeth,” Leo says, “you really don’t look good. Why don’t we get Jason up here?”

Annabeth shoots Leo a look that must have taken him aback, because he stutters, “uh, well...how about Hedge?”

Gleeson Hedge? The hot-blooded satyr that’ll attack first and ask questions later? Annabeth tries to snap out of her reverie and offers Leo a shaky smile.

“Uh, no, J-Jason’s fine,” she says, “I’m just a little...uh, groggy. Is all.” 

Leo raises an eyebrow. “I can imagine. Wanna go grab Jason?”

Annabeth nods quickly and tries to stand, but feels a bit of vertigo. Leo reaches out and catches her arm. 

“Air-sickness,” he says, grinning. Annabeth tries to smile back, then slowly makes her way to Jason’s cabin.

The ship is never quite quiet. Someone is up at every hour of the day and night, and even if every passenger aboard the ship is keeping it down, the creaks and groans of Argo II itself make it feel almost alive, tired and aching just like the rest of them. As Annabeth nears Jason’s cabin, she hears muffled voices inside. Piper’s emotional whispers tremble in the air, contrasted with Jason’s low mumbles. Annabeth freezes. They’re together. In his bedroom. At night. 

_Oh,_ she thinks, and for a moment wishes that she had her Yankee’s cap on her right now. As it is, she stands awkwardly in the hallway as Piper bursts out the door, teary-eyed and with her pajama shirt mis-buttoned. She seems a little ruffled, and Annabeth isn’t sure whether to greet her like nothing unusual is happening or just hang back and hope Piper doesn’t notice her.

As it is, she doesn’t have time to think of it for long, because Piper immediately spots her. 

“A-Annabeth,” she says, straightening her posture. It’s dim in the ship’s corridor, and Annabeth can’t tell if Piper is blushing or not. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Annabeth says softly, “um, I wanted to, uh… see if Jason was available?”

Piper stiffens, and for some reason Annabeth feels her own cheeks grow hot. “Um, Leo thought he would be good to take over for co-pilot. Seeing as I’ve downed way too many Mountain Dews trying to stay up.”

Well, it breaks the tension at least. Piper’s eyes crinkle as she laughs. “I can kind of tell. You’re a little shaky. Go ahead.”

She starts off down the hall, and Annabeth watches her go. Being the daughter of Aphrodite, Piper is beautiful no matter what, but something in her posture as she tries to slink away from Jason’s room tells Annabeth that she’s the last one to know that right now. 

Now Annabeth is left with Jason. Great. Awkwardly, she clears her throat and tries to square her shaky shoulders.

“Hmph,” she says, and then steps up to Jason’s door, knocking firmly and politely. Not a half second later and Jason’s already flung the door open, leaving Annabeth face-to-face with him. Him, wearing nothing but long boxers. Now Annabeth’s cheeks are very, very red, and so are his.

“Oh,” Jason stammers, stepping backwards. Maybe he was expecting Piper to come back? Probably. Annabeth quickly mirrors the gesture. “Uh, hey, Annabeth. Just...just let me get, um…”

Annabeth’s gaze flickers downwards in spite of herself, and she tries hard not to think about what a nice build he has. If Jason notices, he tactfully refrains from commenting.

Gods, he’s so unlike Thalia. Whether or not Jason’s right about being Thalia’s brother, she thinks, if Thalia was here right now, she’d probably give Annabeth a piece of her mind on Jason’s behalf for catching him in this position. 

Jason closes the door and Annabeth studies her shoes with all the attention she’d give an architectural outline of the Empire State Building, and she hears hasty rummaging in his cabin. In a few minutes he opens the door again, now wearing jeans and his Camp Halfblood T-shirt. 

He looks so earnest, she thinks, even though he’s not one of them, not really. She feels a bit guilty for her distrust of him, but then she thinks about Silena and Chris. And Luke... Traitors can be nice people too, she thinks. But all that means is that you can’t always trust nice people.

“How are you?” he asks, studying her with a similarly guarded expression. Annabeth feels her cheeks grow hot again, but she shrugs nonchalantly.

“Awake,” she says. Jason snorts a little. It’s good to know he has a bit of a sense of humor. “Leo needs you in control.”

“Go catch up on your sleep,” he says, “We need a brain like yours running at top capacity, you can’t go sleep-deprived.”

“Thanks,” she says, although she’s not sure she likes how commanding his tone is, nor is she sure about his flattery. 

He was a praetor at the Roman camp, she thinks. She likes to be the one in charge, but he’s used to being top dog, too. Reason number three that he puts her on edge, she supposes. 

Jason steps into the hall and politely bids her goodnight. Annabeth does not return his gesture, and merely watches him go for a moment before heading into her own cabin and tossing herself onto her bed. 

Sleep doesn’t come for hours, with her jittery body and tense mind. When it does, she dreams about Percy. Of course she does.

___

Demigod dreams are vivid. Frequently, they’re a way for the gods or other beings to communicate something important to you. Annabeth’s used to talking with her mother in her sleep, or getting a message from Iris. Spending time with the children of Hypnos, Morpheus, and Melinoe since the minor gods gained cabins has taught her not to treat her dreams lightly. So when she wakes up, shaky and dry-mouthed, she’s irritated to realize that she can’t remember her dream. She remembers him, yes, but nothing else.

Percy, she thinks, Mom. Melinoe, Morpheus, Hypnos. If you’re trying to send me a message… 

Try harder, she wants to say, but maybe that wouldn’t be respectful. Annabeth blearily rubs her eyes and stands, walking to the cabin’s mirror and trying to rake a hairbrush through her messy hair. Piper really doesn’t know how good she has it, Annabeth thinks to herself. Then she remembers seeing Piper and Jason last night, and feels a bit awkward again. She’s not necessarily looking forward to seeing Piper at breakfast. Hopefully Jason himself is asleep now.

As it happens, she does see Piper at breakfast, and only Piper. Leo and Jason must be sleeping off the night shift in their cabins. Annabeth doesn’t know where Hedge is, and she won’t ask. As she sits herself down with oatmeal and a slice of French toast, a fork comes down and swipes the toast from her plate.

“Merci,” Piper says, grinning from ear to ear. Whatever embarrassment she had the night before she seems to have recovered from. Annabeth feigns offense at having her breakfast stolen.

“De rien,” Annabeth replies, “leave it to you to swipe something. The French toast, no less.” 

“What can I say?” Piper says, “I’m a kleptomaniac.”

Annabeth laughs, grateful that Piper’s behaving normally. They sit and talk through the day’s plans. How long it’ll be before they get to Jupiter, what Piper should do. Annabeth details her own role and Leo’s role, but falters when she gets to Jason. Piper catches her eye and blushes.

“So,” she says, “do you think…” She trails off.

“What?” Annabeth asks, although the tremor in her voice gives away her discomfort. Piper shrugs, fiddling with her cereal.

“Um,” she mutters, “well, Jason said that he...um, he knew someone at Jupiter. A girl.” 

“Oh,” says Annabeth. She, in turn, draws a few circles in her half-empty oatmeal bowl, avoiding Piper’s gaze. A tense silence stretches between them before Piper speaks, uncharacteristically soft and uncertain.

“If you, well,” Piper says, “you know…”

There’s another awkward silence. Is she going to mention Percy? Please, Piper, no Percy, Annabeth thinks. She doesn’t want to talk about him right now, not after her hazy dream.

“With Percy,” Piper says. Shit, well. Piper’s definitely not telepathic, then. Annabeth’s expression falls, and Piper picks up on it. 

“Oh, gods,” she says hastily, “no, Annabeth, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to--”

“No, no,” Annabeth says, forcing a pained grin. “Go ahead, Piper.”

Piper hesitates. “Are you sure?”

“Mm-hmm,” Annabeth says, unconvincingly. Now that she knows Piper was going to mention him, she wishes that she would just spit it out.

“If you don’t want--” Piper begins, but Annabeth cuts her off.

“Just tell me, Piper,” she says, a little too roughly. Piper winces, and for a moment Annabeth sees a flash of the girl she saw last night, hunched shoulders and teary eyes. 

“If Percy, um,” Piper says, then pauses before Annabeth goads her again, tapping her finger on the table they’re sitting at. “If he had, like, a fake girlfriend. You’d be pretty upset, right?”

To her own horror, Annabeth finds herself letting out a sharp laugh. It’s part relief that Piper’s acknowledged the downright strange situation with Jason, part shock at her candor. Piper looks down at her cereal, biting her lip, and it’s Annabeth’s turn to feel guilty.

“Piper, listen,” Annabeth says, and she reaches a hand out to squeeze her friend’s shoulder. “I’m glad you asked. Really.” She didn’t really want Piper to ask, but now that the situation’s out in the open, the atmosphere feels less tense.

Piper looks up at Annabeth with teary eyes. Annabeth continues, “No, I mean, I wouldn’t… No, I wouldn’t be happy. But if the girl didn’t know if Percy and I were… you know, I wouldn’t hold it against her.”

She thinks about how she treated Rachel the first time they met and inwardly cringes. Okay, correction: she’d try not to hold it against her. But Piper doesn’t need to know the nuances.

Shifting her gaze downwards again, Piper nods slowly. “So, well, I mean-- so Jason never really seemed to know what to do with me. With us. I really liked him. Maybe it’s part of being Aphrodite’s daughter, I don’t know. But he always held back. He tried, I think…” she’s quiet for a moment, her cheeks flushing slightly.

“I made a fool of myself trying to get him on board, some way,” she mutters, and Annabeth’s tired brain flickers to last night. No, bad Annabeth, don’t think that. “I don’t think it’s working out though. Mom was pressuring me, with him. And every time I see him, I feel all these feelings and remember all these-- and…”

Her voice breaks, her teary eyes spilling over. Annabeth puts an arm around Piper’s shoulders.

“T-Thanks,” Piper says, “but it’s not real. It’s Hera. I’m just trying to pick up where she left off. And all of Wilderness School, all of last year, it’s gone. Leo and I, we’re not mad at Jason, gods no. It’s not his--”

If she was going to say fault, she stops herself. Best not to anger Hera. “Maybe I tried so hard with him because I was afraid that if I let myself be angry, he’d think I was blaming him. He’s so sweet, you know. But that whole year, gone.”

Annabeth isn’t sure what to say. Last year, Luke was still alive and Kronos was a threat at large. Last year feels like a lifetime ago to her. She can’t imagine it being taken from her, though she imagines that Piper’s year was less eventful than her own.

“Who was I this past year?” Piper continues, voice tight. “Who was Leo, even? It’s all gone, and so is Jason’s whole life. And I don’t want to pretend that I didn’t lose part of myself when he dropped into our lives. My whole year, it became about him. I can’t pretend that that’s okay. Because it’s not. And it’s not for him, either. I mean, it was worse for him. It sucked in general. I guess we agreed on that.”

Then Piper turns away. She doesn’t make a peep, but Annabeth can see her shoulders shaking. Piper wipes her eyes and looks down at her cereal.

“So we’re not together anymore,” she says, “he needs to figure out who he is. And I do too.”

The steel in Piper’s voice that Annabeth’s come to recognize returns when she mutters, “And I don’t care what the gods think.”

Annabeth looks up worriedly at the ceiling of the ship. Maybe Hera is going to strike them down from the sky as Piper speaks. Yet she hears nothing but the tired groans of Argo II, and she realizes that she can relate all too well to them. 

__

Later, Annabeth tries to unwind in the rec room. She pulls out a book she got for her birthday from her father, a history of Roman urban planning. To the others in the rec room, Gleeson Hedge at the dartboard and Piper and Leo leaning over the fooseball table, Annabeth still probably looks like she’s working. But she’s interested in the ways that Rome constructed street plans and aqueducts, and if there’s any silver lining to having to barter with the Romans for Percy, getting to see Camp Jupiter’s layout has to be one of them. 

Leo curses at Piper from the fooseball table, and Annabeth glances up at them covertly. Piper’s face still looks a little splotchy, and she suspects Leo’s noticed, although she doesn’t know if he knows about what happened with Piper and Jason. 

“You cheated,” he insists, “you charm-spoke me into throwing the match.”

“I was just posturing,” Piper insists, “all I said was that you’d lose, ‘cause you know, you’re horrible at fooseball.”

“Yeah, you _told_ me I’d lose.”

“I was just _predicting,_ Valdez. Give me a break, gods.”

Leo grins, “Yeah, _just predicting,_ like how you _just borrowed_ that car.”

Piper smiles back at him. “I wouldn’t charmspeak you, Leo. Trust me.”

Leo makes a big show of clutching his hand to his chest, like he’s trying to fight her compulsion of him, then sighs melodramatically. _“Yes, Master Piper. Whatever you say.”_

Piper sticks her tongue out at him. She seems to have recovered from this morning well, at least for now. Annabeth wonders briefly where Jason is. 

A few minutes later, speak of the devil. Jason appears, flustered and breathless, in the doorway. “Uh, Leo?” he asks, pulling Leo from another squabble he’s having with Piper. Piper looks off to the side as Leo turns around. “We, er, we might need you at mast.”

“What’s up?” Leo asks. 

Jason’s face is pale and he gestures to the door. “Birds. Big ones.”

Annabeth is on her feet in an instant. “Elaborate, please, Jason?”

Jason coughs. “Er, big birds made of metal?” Just then, a sharp crashing sound wracks through Argo II and Leo cusses. 

“Shit, that’s not great, Jason,” he mutters. “Well, what’s the plan?”

Annabeth’s mind is fuzzy and slow today, but she thinks she has an idea of what Jason’s referring to. Her mother has mentioned metallic birds in Greek myths before, but she needs…

“Well,” she says, turning to Jason. “what are you waiting for? Take me to see them.”

Jason looks at her now, his blue eyes sharp and perplexed. “You? You’re a daughter of Athena, Annabeth. I don’t think that--”

Impatiently, Annabeth grabs her Yankee’s cap off the chair next to her and plops it on her head, turning invisible. Jason startles, then sighs, as if he takes her point. She walks up to him and he looks shocked again when she starts to speak. She rather enjoys this, she thinks.

“I can’t figure out a plan unless I know who I’m dealing with, Grace,” she says, then takes the hat off and watches him stumble back with some satisfaction. “Take me to them.”

“I’ll man the ship,” Leo says, and Piper looks at Coach Hedge before saying, “We’ll uh, be on standby... I guess?”

“No,” Jason says, “you all need to stick together. Annabeth and I will make sure that they don’t get to the control room. We have to protect that--” another crash rings through the ship and Piper grabs the fooseball table for support. “--that room first and foremost.”

Piper blushes and nods before Leo grabs her by the arm, hurrying her away to the control room. Hedge looks at Jason and Annabeth.

“Good luck,” is all he says, and takes off running behind Piper and Leo.

Jason looks at Annabeth, but before he can speak, she cuts him off.

“I’ll put on the cap and follow you. Don’t worry about me. Hold them off while I figure out a plan, got it?” she says. His eyes narrow, and she imagines that he doesn’t like her taking the lead any more than she likes it when he takes the lead, but then he nods.

“Okay,” he says, and motions for her to follow him. Annabeth dons the Yankee’s cap once more.

They run down the hallway, and at first Jason nervously glances over his shoulder every once in a while, as if trying to make sure that she’s still there. Annabeth doesn’t want to vocally alert him, lest whatever she’s trying to spy on also hears her, so she sighs and grabs his arm. 

“I’m here,” she says when he jolts back, “but don’t act like I’m here.” 

He does as he’s told, scanning the surroundings of the cabin before walking forward again, Annabeth gripping his lower arm. Then they get to the first metal feather, sticking through the wall of Argo II. Annabeth grins. Just as she thought.

Then, a loud screech rings through the cabin. “Fuck,” Jason says, and for a moment Annabeth is taken aback. In her head, she thought of him as the kind of guy who only says words that are allowed on the radio, but this is probably the most appropriate time for profanity if there ever was one. “Alright, I have to go take care of this.”

They hurry out to the masthead, and Annabeth holds her breath when she sees the two birds in front of her. Gigantic birds, with metallic feathers and bronze beaks. A huge flock circles the sky overhead, occasionally casting large shadows over the deck of the ship. There are too many to count, and far too many to kill.

Stymphalion birds, she thinks. Heracles fought them himself, and so has Chiron. Then the birds make a beeline for Jason, who lets out a battle cry and knocks them back with a blast of wind. Annabeth bites back a scream of terror and annoyance with him when she herself is knocked back, almost losing her cap in the process, and one bird’s metal feathers shoot past her. Some tactician he is. 

It’s hard to land a killing blow through any of the birds’ metallic coat of feathers. They also like to eat people, if Annabeth remembers correctly, and she isn’t sure if the copper smell in the air is the birds themselves, the storm, or the blood she sees on their talons and beaks. She isn’t sure that she wants to know.

Annabeth’s seen Stymphalion birds before. She remembers what she and Percy had figured out at Camp Halfblood, about how the birds were sensitive to noise.

“Jason,” she hisses, “if you summon a _tornado_ , all that’s going to do is cover Argo II in bird poop and metal feathers.”

She dodges another feather and runs to a different corner of the deck. “You can’t find a weak spot with most of them. Not in time. Make noise. They hate noise. Some electricity wouldn’t hurt either-- metal is a good conductor, after all.”

Jason glances over at her, then nods. Trying to concentrate, he holds his hands up like he’s about to perform a magic trick. A low rumble sounds in the sky, and a clap of thunder breaks the silence. Lighting flashes around them, lighting the entire deck up. Annabeth catches her breath. He really could be Thalia’s brother, couldn’t he? 

Lightning catches the feathers of the birds, and Annabeth hears more piercing screeches. Another clap of thunder and lightning rings out over the deck, and Annabeth backs away under the masthead for cover as a few more feathers fall on the ground beside her, sticking into the metal flooring like the darts that Hedge threw on the dartboard back in the rec room. 

Birds drop from the sky or fly away at top speed. A bird almost lands on the deck itself, but Jason knocks it back with a blast of air, and the other birds in the sky hurry away. After a few moments, the only sound in the air is the storm Jason summoned. The battle has finished as suddenly as it began.

Annabeth realizes that she’s holding her breath, and rain is pouring down in the air, making it thick and hard to breathe in. She lets out a gasp, and Jason turns to her, his hair wet and plastered to his handsome face. His eyes look bigger and lighter than usual, and worried. Oh. Her cap fell to the side when she was running.

Jason closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them.

“I was scanning the air magic around us,” he says. “I think they’re gone. But Leo’s gonna kill me for what I did to the Argo’s deck.”

He grins weakly, looking drained and tired. So is Annabeth, though, and for the first time since she’s met the guy, she looks at him and smiles back. “Thank gods Leo doesn’t shoot metal feathers everywhere and try to eat people when he’s mad,” she says. Jason lets out a loud, relieved laugh, and Annabeth does too. Then Jason steps back, pauses, and holds his foot out in disgust. 

“Oh,” he says, “they also pooped on the deck. Like big, carnivorous seagulls.”

Annabeth’s face falls, and Jason looks at her with alarm. “Annabeth? Is something…” he begins, and then his eyes roll back in his head and he sways slightly. 

“The birds,” Annabeth says, rushing over to catch him, “they also have, they have poisonous…”

But when Jason slumps against her, she’s knocked backwards into another pile of Stymphalion bird poop. Annabeth weakly tries to shove him off her, but her vision is already blurring.

“...shit,” she says lamely. She collapses with his weight against her.

 _If I let bird poop kill Jason Grace,_ she thinks to herself, _Thalia’s gonna track me down in Elysium and kill me once over..._ before the world around her goes dark. 

___

She sees Percy’s face again, but when she calls out to him, his lips move soundlessly. The Morpheus connection must be awful out here, she thinks, because this dream feels more lucid than the last one she had of Percy, yet she’s not getting any sound. It’s definitely a demigod dream, right? So why can’t she speak to him?

But what matters is she’s right. He’s here, and he’s looking for her. Annabeth’s heart leaps in her chest as she reaches out to Percy, but to her shock, he pulls away. 

“Percy?” she calls out, “Percy, why are you…?”

She feels cold all of a sudden. As Percy’s sea green eyes fade into the hazy grey background of her dreamscape, she has the strong urge to follow him wherever he’s going. But is that right? Is that really Percy, or is it a trap?

Annabeth jolts awake. She’s lying in Argo’s infirmary, the curtain drawn around her. Jason is lying to her side, still unconscious. Annabeth makes to sit up, but her muscles ache. She can barely move. Great. She can’t bargain with the Romans like this, can she? 

At least nothing stinks of Stymphalion bird poop in here. 

“I feel awful, Leo,” Piper’s soft, wavering voice comes through the curtain. When she sounds soft and wavering, that usually means something’s very wrong. Annabeth tenses, listening. “We’re not pushing him away, right? He didn’t think we were going to push him away. We wouldn’t do that. I-- we love him…”

“Pipes, it’s alright,” Leo’s voice sounds soft and gentle too, which is doubly concerning. “It’s not gonna be an issue. We don’t need Wilderness School to give a shit about Jason-- he’s had our backs before. Right? We have the last quest, and this one to build on. He’s our friend, he has to know that’s not gonna change.”

“I don’t know what will change,” Piper says. Then she pauses. “Leo, do you think we were friends? Just the two of us? Before Jason?”

Leo is silent, and Annabeth feels like she’s intruding. She can’t move or knock herself back out, though, so she tries to sidestep any guilt she feels for overhearing this conversation.

“...I can’t know anything for sure,” Leo says, “but that’s what I’m saying. It doesn’t matter, or it shouldn’t. Whoever we were, I’m pretty sure we can try to find that again. But it doesn’t change who we are now, right? And we have Jason now. And... Um, each other?”

The last sentence comes out squeaky and unsure, like a tentative question. Gods, Leo is so obvious. Piper has to realize, Annabeth thinks. She half-expects Piper to break the tension with a joke or scold Leo for hitting on her, but nothing like that happens. There’s a shuffling of fabric, and a long silence. Then Piper speaks again. “Thanks, you know…” 

Okay, well maybe Piper doesn’t realize how Leo sounded. Or maybe Annabeth’s mistaken-- Leo’s always been a weird one, so who knows? Piper seems like she’s going to say something more, but another silence falls on the room instead. 

“...You’re pretty good at pep talks, Repair Boy,” Piper says finally. Another shuffling of fabric, and then Annabeth hears someone step towards the curtain. She closes her eyes quickly.

“They’re still out cold,” Leo says, “who’d have thought-- big man-eating war pigeons with metal feathers and beaks and it’s their _poo_ that nearly does you in?”

“Hedge is bullshitting us, Leo,” Piper says. “They probably got knocked out by the storm. Not _poison poop.”_

“Jason got knocked out by his own storm? I doubt it,” Leo scoffs, “Well, either way, I’m not the one cleaning the deck up. How about you handle it?”

“In your dreams,” Piper says, “you’re the repair boy, remember?”

“If you don’t pitch in to clean up the poison bird feces, Pipes, then I’m never gonna stop calling you beauty queen.”

Piper makes an offended noise, like the term “beauty queen” is the worst insult in the world. “Ugh, deal,” she says, “you’re totally gross.”

“Thanks,” Leo says, “coming from you, that’s an affectionate statement.”

The curtain closes again and then the door opens and shuts. Annabeth thinks back to her dream, and back to Percy. The way Piper and Leo were talking reminded her of how she’d talked to him before he went missing. Seaweed brain, he’d said to her once, was a term of endearment. Piper and Leo always seem a little more...mutual in their back and forth, but the banter is kind of similar.

 _Was that really you, Percy?_ she thinks to herself. _What did you want to tell me…?_

If it _is_ him, he remembers her, right? He has to. But something’s interfering, something that doesn’t want him to talk. Is he in danger?

Once, Annabeth’s father had told her that the worst part of losing someone is not knowing when you’ve said your last goodbye to them. And now, try as she might, she wants to remember saying goodbye that last time, feeling him hold her close, but her foggy mind pulls a blank. When was the last time she even called him seaweed brain? Told him that she loved him?

“Annabeth?” Jason’s voice makes her turn her head, and she blinks a few times when she realizes that tears are streaming down her face. “Is everything alright?”

“How,” Annabeth says, inhaling, “how long were you awake?”

“Long enough to hear…” Jason bites his lip, turning his gaze to the ceiling. “More than I should have.”

“Piper and Leo,” Annabeth says, and a pained look briefly shoots through Jason’s face before he nods.

“Yes,” he says. After a silence, he follows up with a soft mumble of, “It could have been worse, though.”

“You pretended to be knocked out?” Annabeth says. Without missing a beat, Jason replies, “Didn’t you?”

“Strange minds think alike,” Annabeth says. Then she pauses. “I can’t exactly go to Camp Jupiter like this. Neither can you.”

Jason’s face grows serious again, and Annabeth tries to scrutinize his expression. Is he planning anything? Does he look guilty or just pensive?

 _Hey guys,_ she imagines him saying, brave heroic smile intact as he hands Piper, Leo, and herself, handcuffed, over to the praetor, _I got them for you. Let’s celebrate-- is Dominoe’s still open this late? Oh, and is Percy being fed well enough before we throw him into a pit with monster lions? We absolutely must follow rules 21, 17, and 198 section B when it comes to demigod coliseum sacrifice, remember that._

But now seeing Jason’s pale, pained features, Annabeth bites back her doubts and even feels a little guilty. If Percy was a disoriented amnesiac being treated with suspicion in Camp Jupiter, she’d be upset. She should extend Jason the same courtesy. 

“I think,” he says slowly, “that they’ll understand. I know...people there.”

A girl, Piper had said. Jason doesn’t look back at Annabeth before he continues. “Can I ask you something, Annabeth?”

Annabeth tenses a bit, but says, “Shoot.”

Jason swallows and keeps his gaze on the ceiling. Then, after a pause, he turns his face and meets her eyes. His own eyes are cold now, and troubled. Annabeth returns his gaze, trying not to falter. She needs to look strong, she thinks.

“Thalia,” Jason says, “did she ever… Did it ever seem like she had a brother?”

Annabeth narrows her eyes in spite of herself. If Jason was-- hypothetically was-- an impostor, this would be a strange way of deflecting attention from himself. 

“No,” she says, matter of factly. “She may not have thought it was a good idea to blab around, though. For all she knew, she could be putting a mark on your head talking about you to everyone.”

Jason’s features soften, and he looks relieved. “Oh,” he says, “well, yeah. I guess. It was weird seeing her with the hunters. Like, she’s already planned out the rest of...forever with them. I missed out on...everything.”

Annabeth feels another pang of sympathy as Jason turns his face upwards again and says, “Piper was right about how it feels.” 

“I’m sorry,” Annabeth says after a long pause. “That… That must be awful.” _If you’re telling the truth._

She feels guilty again, not just for trying to comfort Jason while hiding her suspicion of him, but also when she thinks back to how Thalia looked after her as a child. Thalia teaching her how to throw a knife, Thalia giving her half of her candy bar or sandwich whenever she asked. Thalia blowing on Annabeth’s hands in the cold winter streets of the city to warm them. She never mentioned having a brother, Annabeth thinks, but she took to Annabeth pretty quickly. Was it because Annabeth was around Jason’s age? Had Thalia ever tried looking for him when they were traveling together? Or had she lost hope by that point?

“I’m sorry, too,” Jason says, “I don’t think that what happened, what Juno-- or Hera, what she did is easy on any of us…”

Annabeth’s own face flinches, and Jason quickly finishes, “...it’s not a contest, is what I’m saying.”

To her own surprise and confusion, Annabeth finds herself shooting her second genuine smile to Jason, only a few hours after the first one. She must have hit her head hard on the way down when she passed out. “Thank you,” she says. “It means a lot.” 

Jason smiles back at her, and for a moment she can kind of see a resemblance to Thalia, mainly with the way his eyes crinkle and nose scrunches with his grin. “How long do you think we’ll be paralyzed for?” he asks.

“Hopefully long enough that Piper and Leo don’t try to force us to clean up the poison bird shit that nearly killed us,” Annabeth says. She realizes that if she can’t move, she may end up needing to chat with Jason in the meantime until someone comes back for them.

 _So, Mr. Amnesiac, what do you do in your free time? If you had the opportunity to pick up any hobbies after having your memory wiped, anyways._ Annabeth can’t really come up with much of a conversation topic, but fortunately Jason picks up the slack.

“So,” he says, “you like architecture?”

“Yeah,” Annabeth says, a little surprised that he noticed. She’s only mentioned it once or twice on Argo II, she thinks. Maybe three times. Outside of mealtimes anyways, and whenever anyone asks her what books she’s reading, or when someone wants to know something about the architectural history of the original Argo. Okay, maybe if you count those times, she’s brought it up more, but…

“We learned about that in Camp Jupiter, I think,” Jason says, “Roman urban planning. It was different from Greek cities. Greeks built roads to connect cities to one another, but all roads in Rome…”

“...led to Rome,” Annabeth finishes excitedly, “specifically, the Golden Milestone. Yeah, it was the same with the Mayan city Coba for a while.”

“So you know a lot about that?” Jason asks.

“Obviously,” says Annabeth. “It’s what I want to do, assuming I live past twenty.”

Jason is quiet again. He can’t be sad about what she just said, Annabeth thinks. Demigods expect to die young. Right?

“There’s a university in Camp Jupiter. An entire city,” he says after a pause. “People get married, have kids. It’s not right that you guys don’t expect to live a long time. I mean, we didn’t either, exactly, but it was easier to plan for the future.”

Marriage? Kids? Annabeth can’t even imagine. She’s vaguely heard of some demigods leaving behind legacies, but it’s incredibly rare. If two demigods had children, she wonders briefly, how powerful would it be? Less powerful? More powerful? Can a half god and a half god make a whole god? Somehow, she doubts it. But she came from her mother’s brain. God reproduction is probably beyond even her. 

She and Percy never talked about their future. On some level, they must have known the possibility of losing one another, but now that his absence is staring her in the face, she finds herself wondering why Camp Halfblood doesn’t seem interested in keeping them alive past age eighteen.

“Well,” she says, “maybe when this is all over, I’ll get an honorary admission to your university. How about that?”

Jason chuckles to himself. Annabeth tries to think of something to say.

“Were you planning on studying there?” she asks. Jason shrugs, one-shouldered.

“I would have liked to. Being a praetor, I’d probably have studied Roman law or something,” he says. “I like Roman history, though. It’s cool to see the differences between Greece and Rome, now that I’ve met the Greek demigods.”

“My dad’s a history professor, and he’s written books on stuff like that,” Annabeth says, “if you want, I could loan you one.”

Jason grins at her. “Really? Thanks.”

So small talk isn’t that hard. Annabeth and Jason chat for a while longer, until Gleeson Hedge unceremoniously swings open the curtains.

“You two are awake?” he says. “Good. We have a bit of a, eh, problem.”

“What kind of--” Annabeth says, but Jason cuts her off.

“What kind of problem?” he asks. That was going to be my line, Annabeth thinks irritably, though she says nothing. 

“Well,” Hedge rubs his neck nervously. “The ship’s been damaged and absorbed a lot of water. From some random storm.”

Random, Annabeth thinks, right. But she told Jason to summon lightning, so she says nothing. If he’s implicated, she probably will be too. Then who’ll take over as leader? Hedge himself? Gods, no.

“So we might have to dock it.”

“Great,” Annabeth mutters. “How long will that put us back for?”

“I don’t know,” Hedge says. “Ask Leo when you can stand up. Oh, and here’s some ambrosia squares for you both.”

He opens up his hand and drops a square into Annabeth’s mouth. It tastes like popcorn that her dad would eat with her during their movie night. She wiggles her fingers, feeling her mobility return to her. 

Looking over at Jason, she sees him swallowing the last of his ambrosia with a scrunched up expression. His eyes are distant, with a far away look. Then he glances up when he sees her looking at him. 

“What’s up?” he asks, looking briefly annoyed. Was he remembering something, just now? Maybe she looks like she’s intruding, she thinks. Or he realizes that she’s felt suspicious of him for a while now.

“Can you sit?” she asks. Jason takes a breath and slowly pulls himself up. 

“I don’t know how long it’ll be before we’re in top form again,” he mutters. “Hedge? Where are you?”

A voice from behind the curtain says, “Sorry, I was just checking to see how much ambrosia we have left. You need something?”

“Can you grab Piper and Leo? We need to convene,” Jason says. Annabeth nods, though Hedge can’t see her. 

“Yeah, just a minute,” Hedge says. “I’ll be back.”

Jason lies down again with a heavy sigh, and Annabeth stays propped up on her shoulder. A tense silence fills the room as they wait.  
___

“Hey, guys,” Piper says cheerfully when she pulls up a chair next to them. She’s wearing a white hoodie and ripped jeans, her dark hair falling loosely over her shoulders. “How are you?”  
She’s mainly looking at Annabeth, avoiding Jason’s gaze. Leo sits down beside her, looking at Annabeth, then Jason. His tool belt is slung over the back of his chair. 

“Alive,” Annabeth says. “Now what’s this about the ship docking?”

Leo laughs nervously. “Uh, well, someone summoned up a real twister while the ship was already taking damage. We just need to wait a while while I check the system.”

“How long should that take?” Annabeth asks. Leo shrugs. “Half a day, or so. Assuming no one else comes to eat us, it’ll only put us back… a day more?”

“Great,” Annabeth says. “And the Giants remain at large.” 

“There’s not much we can do, I don’t think,” Piper says matter-of-factly. 

“The issue is that I’m not sure how probable it is that nothing _will_ try to eat us,” Annabeth says. She stands, glad to see that she can do so steadily now. 

“So I’ll man the controls while you do damage repair, Leo,” she says. “Two of us can fly this ship, but only you can check out the mechanics. That should save some time.”

Leo blinks, but nods. “Sounds like a plan, chief.”

“The rest of you,” Annabeth says, looking from Piper to Jason, then at Hedge who’s watching them from the side of the room. “Stay alert.”

She doesn’t notice Jason’s pale, unfocused expression beside her, looking downward at his shoes, but lost in thought.

___

Stay alert. Easier said than done, she thinks. Trying to fly the ship while checking the rest of the control system periodically is starting to wear on Annabeth. Briefly, she wonders what’s happening back at Camp Halfblood. Gaea is awake again, and the longer the Argo stalls, the more time she has to stay one step ahead of them. Or two, or three. Annabeth wonders if she could ask Chiron to keep her updated on what’s happening in the country, although right now she’s a little preoccupied.

Focus on getting to Jupiter, she thinks, and when you do, you know the drill. You made the drill. You--

“Annabeth?” Piper’s voice snaps Annabeth out of her thoughts. She glances up.

“Oh,” she says, “Piper. What’s wrong?”

“I thought you could use a co-pilot,” Piper says, grinning. “If that’s okay.”

“Sure,” says Annabeth. “Keep watch over the monitor. I’ll focus on trying to land.”

They don’t have much time to chat for the next few hours. Annabeth gives Piper an impromptu demo of monitoring closer ground on Argo II’s screens, and then they try to stay focused on the task at hand. Argo II won’t show up to regular mortals, but Annabeth would like a relatively concealed location to land it. But it also needs to be an open enough area for the whole ship.

Luckily, California has ample grassland once you venture far enough away from the coast. Most tourists are in California for the beaches anyways, so Annabeth hopes that she’s found a good spot to land. 

“We should be landing in a few minutes,” Annabeth says, late in the evening. Piper nods. 

“Good,” she says, “We have some time.”

“Before what?” Annabeth says, raising her eyebrows. 

Piper blushes. “Some stuff’s been happening, since Jason and I…”

Annabeth clears her throat uncomfortably. Piper looks at her, then says, “I mean, it’s not like-- gods, I’m not boy-crazy or anything. The problem is my mom.”

“What about her?” Annabeth asks. Piper sighs.

“Well, I don’t know how to put it,” she says, “but what would your mom do if you, I don’t know, became a flat-earther or started advocating for book-burning? Or turned out to hate chess?”

“Well,” Annabeth says, “I guess she wouldn’t be happy.”

“Right,” Piper says, “and now imagine that she’s the source of your power. Like, she keeps giving you a leg up when you need it, but then she gets pissed off with you-- and you stop getting that leg up?”

“Um,” is all Annabeth can say. Is Piper saying that Aphrodite’s actually cut her power in half, or what?

“Well, my mom has bailed me out before,” Piper says, “for a while. But now she’s upset that I’m not in love anymore, and I feel weaker. Physically. It’s kind of messed up.”

“How’s your charmspeak?” Annabeth asks. Piper is quiet. 

“It’s not like I got much of a chance to test that out,” she says. “I don’t want to brainwash any of you on the ship.”

“You should at least try to test it out,” Annabeth says. She doesn’t really know what she’s asking, though. Have Piper try to mind control one of them? “Okay, tell you what. When we land the ship, try to test it on me. I’ll think of a test.”

Piper looks at her, shocked. “Really?”

“I trust you,” Annabeth says, finding that she sincerely means it. “And I’m not going to offer any of the guys up to be your test rabbit. But I need to land this thing first.”

“Right,” Piper says. “Well, um, thanks for the offer, Annabeth. It’s just that I don’t know what I’d do without the charmspeak. I’m okay with Katoptris, but I feel so weak now… And I know I’m not the best fighter on here. Jason and Leo are walking natural disasters.”

“You’d think that Aphrodite would have better things to do than punish you for a break-up,” Annabeth says. She tries to keep her tone casual, and Piper laughs politely, but on the inside Annabeth’s worried. Greek gods are known for behaving sporadically, but according to Chiron, they’ve been acting even weirder lately. Piper needs her full power, and Annabeth isn’t certain why Aphrodite would withhold it from her. 

___

They land in an empty field without ceremony, and without any more killer birds. So far, so good. Piper goes off to freshen up, and Annabeth sits back and grabs another soda. Caffeine-free diet Pepsi, this time. She scans her surroundings and checks the path to Camp Jupiter before she looks for Piper again.

Piper is sitting in the mess hall with Leo, talking animatedly about something from Wilderness School. He throws his head back and laughs. Annabeth again gets a feeling of being an intruder, although nothing terribly personal seems to be happening.

The two of them stop when they see her, and Piper clears her throat. Standing, she says goodbye to Leo and follows Annabeth into the hallway.

“So what should I do?” Piper asks. Annabeth considers for a moment. 

“You put Gaea to sleep, right?” she says. “I’m bone tired. I could sit down and you could try to knock me out-- you’d be doing me a favor.”

Piper nods. “Alright, sounds simple enough.”

The rec room is empty, and Annabeth sits down on a soft, cushioned chair, leaning her head back. She already feels drowsy, but she should try to resist for the sake of the test. 

“Okay,” Piper says, as if trying to psyche herself up. “Okay. Annabeth, go to sleep.”

Annabeth waits. Her eyelids get a little heavier, but she soon snaps them back up. She grins at Piper sheepishly.

“Try harder,” she says.

Piper rolls her eyes. “I’m getting weaker.”

“First, we just need to see how strong the charmspeak is right now. Try again.”

“Annabeth,” Piper says, sounding a little annoyed. “Go to sleep.”

This time, nothing happens. “Try not to sound so irritated, maybe?” Annabeth says. Piper huffs. “Just the opposite of that.”

“Annabeth,” Piper says, drawing out each word. She closes her eyes, concentrating. “Go to sleep.”

The world is dark before Annabeth can even respond. This time, she doesn’t dream at all, of anyone, and her mind is blissfully blank for the first time in months.

___

She wakes to the sound of screaming. Quickly, Annabeth scrambles from the chair. Piper put her to sleep, successfully, it seems like. That should be a good thing, except that Piper didn’t seem to bother waking her up. 

And now Piper is screaming. At the top of her lungs. “Leo! Stop it!” 

When Annabeth nears the hallway, she smells something burning. “I’m trying, Piper! Do you think I’m not trying?” Leo’s voice is equally frantic. He’s set something on fire? Involuntary pyrokinesis. Why on Earth did Piper not wake her up earlier? 

Annabeth rounds the corner and comes face-to-face with a jet of flame. She hisses and ducks back. “Guys,” she calls out, “what is happening?”

Piper turns to face Annabeth. “What does it look like? Leo set the ship on fire.” 

“Why didn’t you wake me up?” Annabeth says, “I could have used a nap, but not when the ship is burning!”

“Don’t snap at her!” Leo says, the flames bursting higher for a moment. They seem to be connected to his emotional state. “It only happened a few seconds ago.” Piper looks at him, then back at Annabeth and nods. 

“Fine,” Annabeth says, “so how did it start?”

Neither Piper nor Leo answer, but the flames pick up and scurry across the floors. “Alright, I get it,” Annabeth says, “obviously, that’s the wrong question!” 

Even though she feels more rested now, Annabeth’s getting more irritable by the minute. How she’s going to put out the fire if Leo himself can’t figure it out is practically beyond her, and Piper should have woken her up as soon as she was put to sleep, just so this kind of thing didn’t happen. 

The only thing she can think of is getting Jason to summon more rain, although that will totally destroy Argo II, and their hope of getting to Jupiter. These kids-- as she finds herself thinking of them right now, in spite of them only being a few months her junior-- are supposed to be some of the greatest heroes of all time? She’d rather have Odysseus on her right now.

“If you can’t figure out how to put the damn fire out, Valdez,” Annabeth says, “Argo’s going to be ruined. You do realize that, right?”

Leo clenches his teeth. “Oh, do I? Yeah, as a matter of fact, I _do_. All my hard work, down the drain. It’s almost like _I can’t control this!_ ” 

Flames shoot forward towards Annabeth again, who leaps to the side. The rec room and the corridor look like a burning maze, and she tries to figure out the quickest route forward. 

There’s a stone chest on the side of the hallway with a long stone lid. Annabeth leaps over a tendril of fire and flips the lid over, creating a path out of the hallway. “C’mon, Piper,” she says, “before you burn up.”

“Where are you guys going?” Leo asks. Annabeth bites her cheek again, tasting the blood from her sore. “Somewhere where we don’t get burned to a crisp.”

Piper looks at Annabeth, then Leo with a furrowed brow. “Wait,” she says. 

“Wait?” Annabeth says in disbelief. How naive was Piper? “Wait? Valdez is going to turn you into a pile of ashes if you wait. You’re not the one who makes the plans, you know. I think there’s a reason for that.”

“Shut up,” Leo says, rounding on Annabeth. “How about you shut up? You’re acting like Pipes is an idiot, and I’m some kind of fucking murderer-- _gods_. What in Tartarus is the deal with you?” 

“What’s my deal?” Annabeth cries, “My _deal_ is that I’ve survived quests half as dangerous as this one before I was fourteen. I fought in the Second Titan War and lived, I watched my friends die and my boyfriend get kidnapped, and I’m not going out getting burned up by some little--”

Flames shoot towards Annabeth, and before she can dodge, Piper steps in between them. The flames disperse when she tries to hold up a shaky set of palms.

“This is _not helping!_ ” Piper breaks in. She looks flabbergasted and angry, too, even as she tries to keep her voice steady. “You guys are acting weird. Way too _wired,_ can’t you tell? _I’m_ acting way too wired. Something’s wrong here, can’t you see?”

Annabeth takes a step back. She would breathe in to clear her head, but due to Valdez’s little outburst, that’s not totally helpful. 

Yes, okay, she can see. Something is off. Annabeth tries to go over all of the beings in her mental lexicon that can cause emotional manipulation, and then she looks out the window. It was about four o’clock when she last looked at the sky, but now the night is pitch black. 

“Piper,” she says, “how much time has passed since you put me to sleep?”

“An hour,” Piper says. She looks out at the sky and catches her breath. “What is that?”

“Something that isn’t normal,” Annabeth mutters. She looks back at Leo, who is looking from her to the window to Piper, wide-eyed. 

“Shit,” he breathes, “shit, shit.” The flames fan out around him, and Annabeth grabs Piper as they run down the corridor. Leo is resistant to fire, but right now she needs to make sure that Piper is safe.

“Where’s Hedge?” she calls to Piper, “And Jason?”

“I don’t know!” Piper says, “I was just talking to Leo, and then--” 

They stop short when they see Hedge slumped over the railing of the corridor near the stairs. “Hedge,” Annabeth says, shaking him, but he doesn’t respond. 

“No,” Piper mutters. Her eyes are wide and terrified, “we can’t stop this, we can’t save him Annabeth. He’s dead. He’s dead.”

“Shut up for a half a second,” Annabeth snaps. _Also, forgive me for screaming at your annoying face once my emotions return to normal and I’m not mad at you anymore. If we’re still alive at that point._

Grunting, she tries to sling Hedge over her shoulders. Being Goddess of War’s child, she’s stronger than the average demigod, but not strong enough to carry Hedge without Piper’s help.

“C’mon,” Annabeth says. “Help me.”

“I’m too weak,” Piper whispers, “I’m not strong like the rest of you. All I had going for me was _mind control,_ and now that that’s not going to work…”

“Piper,” Annabeth cuts in. “Something’s doing this to you! Remember, you were the one that noticed that?”

Piper nods, and Annabeth continues, “Let’s survive first, angst later.”

This makes Piper tear up again, but then a more focused expression comes across her face, like she’s trying to fight whatever’s manipulating them, too. She wipes her tears from her eyes and tries to slow her breathing. Moving over to Annabeth, Piper takes hold of Hedge, although she really does seem to be weaker than she was before, and whispers, “Where is Jason? What’s going to happen to Leo?”

“I don’t know,” Annabeth says, “how about we try to focus on not getting killed?”

Piper nods again, but her eyes are still damp. Oh, gods. She’ll be embarrassed about this after...whatever is happening.

They try to carry Hedge a little ways into the corridor, but then a beam falls directly in front of their faces. Piper shrieks and backs away, dropping Hedge. Annabeth curses. Argo II is already dying. 

“Fuck!” she cries, grabbing Hedge by the shoulders, “you know, you could stand to be more fucking useful, Piper.”

“Shut up,” Piper says, “you’re being controlled. Your emotions are being controlled, and so are mine! So stop badgering me.”

“Whatever,” Annabeth says, “grab his feet.”

Together, they take hold of Hedge once more and Annabeth spots a window. 

“C’mon,” she says. Now she can feel the heat of the fire approaching her, and she can see what Piper is wondering as she looks back into the ship.

“The boys will be fine,” Annabeth says, unconvincingly. “Here.”

She nudges her coat off of her shoulders. “My celestial bronze knife is in there. Break open the window.”

Piper fumbles, but grabs onto the knife and with admirable willpower, slashes at the plexi-glass window. It takes her several swipes before she can get a good crack in it, and Annabeth feels sweat collecting on her brow. But soon, Piper manages to carve out a large enough gap for any of the three of them to fit through.

A burst of flame shoots down from the steps and Piper cries out a warning. Annabeth manages to dodge it, Hedge in tow, and moves closer to the window. Her emotions may be heightened, Annabeth realizes, but so are her battle instincts. And her adrenaline is building up the longer she’s here.

“I’ll jump,” she says, “you throw him, I’ll catch him.”

“Really?” Piper says. “I can’t throw him-- I might just try to drop him. Can you actually catch him?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Annabeth says. “Trust me.”

With that, she climbs through Piper’s gap in the plexiglass and drops off the side of the ship. The fall is a good forty feet, and when she hits the ground, her body feels like the Earth itself has punched her. The Earth probably wants to. 

Annabeth tries to brush herself off. “Okay,” she calls, “drop him.”

On cue, a moment more and she finds herself catching a snoring satyr and crumpling to the ground. After a few more seconds, Annabeth stands and brushes herself off. She thinks she’s okay, and Hedge looks alright too. 

Piper lands on the ground beside her a moment later. Instead of standing up, she looks up at the ship tearfully. 

“I love him,” she says, “and now he’s going to die.” 

To her own shock, Annabeth snaps at Piper. “You don’t _love_ Jason,” she says, “and he’s not going to die. We’ll figure out what to do with the fire, but I don’t want to hear another peep about your _fake boyfriend--_ ”

“Not _Jason,_ ” Piper says. “Leo. I _love_ him with all my heart, and when I told him he looked good in his Camp Halfblood T-shirt, he said thank you, and then he burst into flames. And it’s all my fault! I’m too _beautiful!”_

She hugs her knees to her chest and sobs raggedly into her arms. Annabeth rolls her eyes. This is so unlike Piper, and she’s had just about enough melodrama for a lifetime. 

“Please, someone end this,” she says, making a prayer to whatever god may be listening. How will she have to save the day this time?

Hedge is asleep, which indicates the involvement of something with hypnokinesis. And the darkness and emotional warping, that made her think of Nyx. Nyx, the primordial goddess that even Zeus was afraid of crossing. Annabeth’s throat clenches. Was it really Piper who put her to sleep? And what’s happening to Jason?

Then a clap of thunder rings out in the sky, and rain starts to pour on the ship. Smoke rises in the air. Piper looks up, her eyes already teary and watering even more from the smoke.

“Hey, girls,” Leo says, emerging from the ship. His eyes are red-rimmed and exhausted, but at least he’s not trailing flames behind him anymore. “Thanks for keeping Hedge from getting killed.”

Piper runs up to Leo and hugs him tightly around the waist, pressing a kiss to his cheek. He blushes, although thankfully no more flames burst out around them. Then Piper draws back, looking disoriented. 

“Um, good to see that you’re not dead,” she says, awkwardly. Leo chuckles.

“Good to see that I didn’t kill you,” he says, grinning in return. Now it’s Piper’s turn to blush, and she steps away quickly.

Annabeth thinks that her emotions must be returning to normal too, and she hides her smirk when Piper looks at her with a bashful expression, then quickly averts her eyes. 

“You guys,” a voice above them says, “are kind of a handful.”

Jason. He caused the storm that put out the fire. Annabeth looks up at him, blonde hair blowing in the wind. The sky is getting lighter again, like Jason cracked it open with his thunderbolt and let the sun shine through. His face is illuminated by the fading sunset. 

“They are,” Annabeth says, and Jason just grins at her as he lowers himself to the ground. He stumbles slightly, and Leo catches him by the shoulder. 

“Well,” he says, “can we forage for Leo’s tool belt? I’m hungry.”

___

The Argo is a smoking wreck. Leo can barely walk into it before his face crumples. “Uh, you guys go on ahead,” he mutters, “I’m gonna hang back and keep a lookout for trouble.”

Jason and Piper exchange a look, but Jason nods and Piper reaches over to squeeze Leo’s shoulder. Annabeth looks at the trio with a bit of relief, now that she can see that they still seem to get along. 

Piper, Jason, and Annabeth fan out, trying to salvage as much as they can in the whole ship. Some of the rooms still seem to be intact, and Annabeth’s delighted to see that her Yankee’s cap is sitting, untouched, in her pristine cabin. She quickly grabs her backpack, which she’s already prepared just in case of emergency, and stuffs the cap inside, along with a picture of her father flying a biplane. It had seemed like an appropriate picture for the occasion when she was first packing. 

Emerging from the cabin, Annabeth can hear scuffling upstairs. She readies her dagger, hoping that it isn’t another monster come to kill them, but then Piper’s face peeks out from above the bannister.

“Gee, Annabeth,” she says, “I know that we were squabbling earlier, but I didn’t know you had a death wish for me.” 

Annabeth laughs, then motions for Piper to come downstairs. Piper does so after a moment, holding Katoptris in her left hand. 

“So,” Annabeth says in a whispered voice, “I think I know who may be behind this. At least part of this.”

“Who?” Piper asks.

“Nyx,” Annabeth says, “she’s the mother of Hypnos-- Clovis’s father.”

“Clovis’s granny wanted to kill us?”

“Not kill us,” Annabeth says, shaking her head. “She could do that easily. Destroy the Argo, I think. And… well, I don’t know if she can put people to sleep, but…”

“Hedge,” Piper says, her face going slack. Annabeth nods. 

“She’s Hypnos’s mother,” Annabeth says, “I’m not sure. And when you knocked me out, Piper… Are you sure that was you?”

Piper’s eyes are wide now. Different colors flash across her irises, as if they’re cogs in her brain clicking away rapidly.

“Um,” Piper says. “I don’t know. Should we test charmspeak a different way?”

Annabeth nods. “How about… can you try to make me forget something? Or believe something that isn’t true?” 

Piper nods hastily. “Okay, um… Your name is Bob.”

Annabeth blinks at her. Piper tries again more forcefully.

“Your name is Bob.”

No, Annabeth thinks, she’s still pretty sure that she’s Annabeth. “Try again,” she says to Piper.

Piper looks at her, concentrating, and the colors flickering in her irises seem to get more frenzied as she does so.

“Annabeth Chase,” she says, “your name is now _Bob._ ”

Annabeth stares at her, trying to keep a straight face. Then she busts out laughing. "Bob, Piper? Really? That’s the best you could do?”

Piper falters, then starts laughing herself. “What did you want? Brunhilde?” she asks between giggles.

“You know, though,” Annabeth says after she catches some air. “your charmspeak seems to be gone.”

Piper’s face stills and she looks up at Annabeth. “Yeah.”

Well, the mood in the room just took a nosedive. After a pause, Piper says, “So who knocked you out? Whoever knocked out Hedge?”

Annabeth nods. “I’m guessing that. Yeah…” The air is eerily silent after they started and stopped laughing, and then Piper speaks. 

“Do you have everything you need, Annabeth?” she says, fiddling with her braid. “I might go check on Hedge and Leo.”

“Go ahead,” Annabeth says, “just...be careful.”

“Yeah,” Piper says, “of course.”

She hurries down the hall and down to the actual deck of Argo II. Annabeth supposes that she didn’t much like jumping out that window.

___

Annabeth is doing a rundown of the damage on Argo II, writing her notes down in her backpack’s notebook as she goes. Hatch coves are singed with holes in them, rudder is fine. The control room seems to be in good shape, thank the gods. 

She accidentally breaks the pencil lead when she’s noting the fire-licked ceiling panels on the lower floor, when she hears a voice behind her.

“Here,” Jason says, holding out a pencil to her. She takes it and looks up at him. 

“Thanks,” she says. She begins to pick up where she left off writing. After a while, Jason clears his throat and Annabeth glances back up at him. They’re alone now, in Argo II. She doesn’t know where the rest of the crew is, and now that she sees Jason’s serious face, she starts to feel uneasy again.

“I needed to talk to you about something,” he says, keeping his gaze on the burnt ceiling panels. 

“Shoot,” Annabeth says.

“I fell asleep, when Leo set fire to the ship.”

Annabeth glances up at him. “Well, everyone seemed to, except Leo himself. And Piper.”

Jason looks at her, shocked. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Annabeth says. She keeps her own expression calm while she studies Jason’s face. He looks back at her, bemused. It throws him off balance, seeing her so collected, and she can see him trying to put on a stoic expression, too.

“...Did you have a strange dream, too, then?” Jason asks, finally.

Now it’s Annabeth’s turn to look shocked. “Um, no. I didn’t, actually. What type of strange dream are you referring to? God-level strange?”

Jason looks sheepish. “Yes, kind of. There was a woman, half-black and half-white. She told me that the ship was burning.”

He looks her in the eye, and says, “She said that she had amends to make, and that she was going to give me advice.” Annabeth is quiet, listening. Jason hesitates, then continues. 

“Beware of ghosts that haunt you by the day, is what she said,” he mutters. “But… she wasn’t very forthcoming.”

He looks back at the ceiling, then gestures around the room. “Then she snapped her fingers and I woke up to a burning ship.”

Annabeth looks at him, then looks away. “Melinoe, it sounds like. I don’t know if I trust her, though. She sided with Kronos during the Titan War, and she’s hurt friends of mine.”

When she says friends, she thinks of Thalia. Amends to make, she thinks. Percy said that she’d tortured Thalia, taking the form of her mother. Was she helping Jason in order to make up for it?

“A bigger issue is how we’re going to get to Jupiter from here, Jason,” Annabeth says. “Argo’s been destroyed.” 

“Well,” Jason says, “if the whole party got sidetracked in expeditions back at Jupiter, we’d usually send scouts.”

Annabeth narrows her eyes. “You want to split everyone up?”

“I mean,” Jason says, “What can we do? We could try to send for a party, or contact someone at camp, but my memory’s too hazy to be able to focus on anyone at the moment.”

Annabeth glances around them nervously. She holds Leo’s toolbelt in her hand under her notebook, and raises it up. “Let’s get this back to Leo, and reconvene with the others before we talk strategy, Grace.”

If Jason hears the edge in her tone, he ignores it. “Sounds like a plan,” is all he says.

__

The four of them eat soberly, barely speaking to one another for a good half hour. Annabeth wolfs down a Jersey sub and Piper chews her vegan taco in silence. Leo and Jason pass around pizza slices without a word. Hedge is still unconscious, and no one is quite sure how long it will last.

“So,” Jason says at last, “We need to talk about Camp Jupiter.”

Leo looks up at the Argo II, and his shoulders slump. He lets out a low, mirthless laugh. “This can’t be how it ends,” he says.

His voice cracks as he surveys the ship, like he’s speaking about a family member that he’s lost. All of the work he put into Argo, Annabeth thinks with a strong surge of sympathy, months and months, for it to end up like this.

 _And I tried to blame you for it._ Annabeth cringes inwardly. If Nyx-- or whoever it was that manipulated their emotions just now-- comes back, she's worried about what else she might be goaded into saying to drive the rest of the team apart. What _any_ of them might be coerced to do, really.

“You can still fix it,” Piper says, “you’re the repair boy. It’s in your blood.”

Her tone is teasing, but Leo doesn’t respond much. “Thanks, Piper,” he says, voice dull. Piper’s eyes crinkle, and she looks like she’s swallowed something sour. 

Annabeth isn’t really interested in the romantic lives of the three demigods in front of her, though. Her mind is elsewhere. 

The coordinates she chose for the ship were supposed to put them a half a day away from Camp Jupiter, flying at a low altitude. If they tried to navigate by foot, then they’d be delayed by a week or more, at most. But if there was another way…

“You can fly, can’t you, Jason?” she says suddenly. Both Leo and Piper look at her like she’s grown a third eye. 

“What,” Leo says, “Jason’s going to go superman and drop down into Jupiter himself?”

“No,” Annabeth says, “I’d rather be there, too.”

Piper and Leo exchange a glance. Piper looks at Jason, who is nodding slowly. “Jason?” she says, and when he looks at her she bites her lip. Annabeth thinks that this may be the first time they’ve spoken since they broke up.

“Do you think that makes sense?” she asks.

“Well,” says Jason, “I can control the air around me. Wind speed, currents, temperature. I won’t get tired flying, and I could probably go as fast as I needed to. And I’ll make sure not to asphyxiate Annabeth.”

There’s his subtle sense of humor. If Annabeth hadn’t heard Jason crack a few dry jokes before, she’d think he was a psychopath. His tone is barely raised, but Leo and Piper both chuckle like the joke is obvious.

Jason glances over at Annabeth. “You might need some extra protection, but I think it’s a good Plan B.”

“Can Piper come with you?” Leo blurts out, and Piper looks at him with a surprised expression. Leo glances back at her, and quickly continues, “Uh, I mean, I want to stay behind to repair Argo II. I don’t know what’s happening to Hedge. I don’t know what Piper’s going to do, getting forced to stay with unwitting pyromaniac Leo Valdez. Her charmspeak was going to come in handy, right?”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Piper, whacking him lightly on the arm. “I’m not leaving you with an unconscious satyr for company.” 

“But--” Leo begins, and Piper looks at Annabeth pleadingly. Oh, she doesn’t want to talk about the charmspeak thing right now.

“Then it’s settled,” Annabeth says, cutting Leo off. “Jason and I will be the scouts. Jason’s Roman, and I’m the diplomat for the Greeks. It’s meant to be an olive branch mission, anyways. Smaller parties of diplomats are less threatening than triremes.”

Leo scowls. “Last I checked, you thought it was brilliant that I made Argo II.”

“It was, Leo,” Jason says before Annabeth can speak, “but small parties have their own advantages. We’re just trying to re-evaluate what our strengths and weaknesses are, now.”

Leo glances from Jason to Annabeth, then looks back at Argo II. “Alright,” he says. “Should I get the emergency tents and stuff out from her?”

“The ship’s a _girl?”_ Piper asks. “You really need a girlfriend, Leo.”

“It’s not that, Piper, gods,” Leo says, but he’s smiling again. “ships are girls, in _general_. Have _you_ ever met a ship that was a dude?”

“I don’t ask about ships’ genders, you _weirdo.”_

“Yes,” Annabeth says, ignoring the two of them, “let’s get the bedding out.”

“We’ll leave tomorrow morning, then,” Jason says quietly. His pizza sits beside him on a plate, barely touched. 

“Sounds like a plan,” says Annabeth.

____

She somehow knocks out easily, even though she’s felt nervous about traveling alone with Jason for the rest of the evening. She wraps herself in soft down blankets and lets her mind turn off.

And then Annabeth sees Percy again, for only a fleeting moment. When he catches her eyes, he smiles sadly and disappears again, crumbling before her fingertips.

___

“Annabeth?” Jason’s voice wakes her up, and she sits up in bed, her hair unbrushed and some drool possibly dribbling down her chin. 

“Can you maybe knock first?” she asks.

“On the tent?” Jason says. He seems like he’s been up for a while, because he’s dressed and has a backpack slung over his shoulder. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“Well,” Annabeth says, wiping her face, “shout, or something.”

“Right,” Jason says, “I’m sorry. I just thought I should wake you.”

“What time is it?” asks Annabeth. 

“About six in the morning,” Jason replies. “Piper and Leo are asleep. They had the night watch. Hedge is still out. Come on.”

“Zip up the tent, first.”

“Right,” he says, not missing a beat. Annabeth sees his head disappear behind the tent, then a zipping sound. She hastily throws on her gear and brushes her hair out. After checking and double checking her backpack (change of clothes, correspondences on Jupiter, Celestial bronze knife, ambrosia squares, toiletries, and her Yankee’s cap) Annabeth opens up the tent door and steps into the cool morning air.

Jason is waiting in the clearing when she walks out. Leo is rubbing at his eyes, head drooping tiredly. He and Jason are already in the midst of a conversation when Annabeth joins them.

“We’re heading off,” Jason says, “but take care of Hedge. And Piper.”

His voice softens when he gets to Piper’s name. Leo nods quickly, looking flustered. 

“Will do, Jason,” he says, suddenly more interested in his own shoes than Jaso. Jason’s expression doesn’t change, but then he looks over at Annabeth and his mouth curves in the hint of a smile, as he beckons her with a wave of his head. 

“Goodbye, Leo,” Annabeth says. She doesn’t like saying goodbyes, she thinks. She’s too aware now that it could be the last time she says goodbye to whoever she’s talking to. Glancing over at Piper’s tent, Annabeth wishes that someone would go wake her up and they could bid farewell to her, too, but she doesn’t press the issue. Neither Leo nor Jason mention waking Piper. 

Leo hugs Jason tightly, then pats him on the back in the way that boys tend do with each other. Annabeth hugs Leo in turn, then pats him on the back as well.

“Stay safe,” she says. “Good luck with Argo II. We’ll be back as soon as possible.”

“I know, and I’ll be waiting for you guys,” Leo says, trying unconvincingly to sound confident and cheerful.

Jason’s own expression has become pensive and unreadable again. Then he says, “Goodbye, then. Good luck, Leo. And give the others our love.”

A sad smile flickers across Leo’s face. “Okay,” he says. “See you, guys.”

As Jason and Annabeth head away from the clearing, Jason turns to her. “So, do you know what we’re going to do?”

“Was that a rhetorical question, or do you need a plan?” Annabeth asks. 

Jason considers this. “Both, I guess,” he says. “I was referring to flying, yeah, but I trusted you to fine-tune the plans as we went along.”

Annabeth flushes, trying to hide how flattered she feels. “Well, thanks,” she says. “I’m not sure what your...method of passenger carry is.” 

“If you want,” Jason says, “you’ll just come with me in the air.”

Suddenly, he leaps forward and hovers above her. Annabeth squints up at him in the sky, then yelps when she joins him a moment later. He flashes a quick grin, barely noticeable, before continuing, “air manipulation. It’s like you’re your own Argo II.”

“Okay, then,” Annabeth says, refusing to look ruffled. She’s been poring over the map of the San Francisco bay area for days, and now that the sun is in the sky, she holds her watch out to it, angling it so that the hour hand is pointing to the sun. 

South should be between the hour hand and the number twelve on her watch, and it’s also their main direction. Once they go further south, she’ll recognize more landmarks.

“Alright,” she says, sticking her thumb in the direction of her watch, “this way.”

___

Jason may be tired of listening to her orders, Annabeth thinks, and if she were him, maybe she’d be pissed too. But he says nothing every time she stops to re-evaluate directions, lips politely pressed in a thin line while Annabeth lands on a tree branch or stops in the middle of a clearing to survey the surrounding area. 

She won’t tell him this, but sometimes she really thinks that it would be easier if he openly challenged her authority or told her that she didn’t know what she was doing. As it is, Piper and Leo always acted like Jason’s been the de facto leader of Argo II-- gods know why-- since they took off. And he’s never disappointed, never once stepped out of line, like every step he takes around them he’s been planning for. When she knits her eyebrows together to check for directions again, he stands a respectful distance away, lost in his own thoughts. And just what is he thinking?

“I know what I’m doing,” she keeps saying, and Jason says each time, some iteration of: “I believe you.”

Now she’s almost in the bay area, she knows it. “Nearly there,” she says, and Jason says nothing but nods.

If he’d just blown up at her, Annabeth thinks, she could assert herself more clearly, go over the tracking procedures that she’s learned and challenge him to try, just to see his face pale as he backs off. Jason’s eerie silence reminds her of a volcano about to erupt. She doesn’t want to be caught in the middle of the next Mount Vesuvius disaster.

“Alright,” she says for the thirtieth time today, “this way.”

They take to the air again, and a tense silence follows the two of them. Annabeth looks at the landscape underneath her as they near an urban area. Then she gasps in victory.

“There,” she says, “the Golden Gate bridge. Do you know the way now, Grace?”

Jason looks across the streets to the distance that she’s pointing in. It takes him a while, but then his eyes lock on to the bridge. 

“As a matter of fact,” he says slowly, “I think I do. Sorry for doubting you.”

“You doubted me?” Annabeth says, genuinely offended. But he seems to take it as a joke, and smirks to himself. She tries to hold in her own smirk. 

“Camp Jupiter,” she says, “here we come.”

Just hold on, Percy. I’m not going to let you go that easily, she thinks, before Jason whisks them away in a cloud of air.

__

Reyna is sitting in her study, going over policy proposals for the next meeting with her cohort. A young messenger with frazzled ginger braids knocks on her door, breathless, and puffs out, “Praetor, there are visitors in the camp.”

Reyna bolts upright. After what happened with Percy Jackson, she’s tired every day now, but always on guard. “Who, Lucia?”

Lucia swallows, and after a moment, says, “A Greek demigod.”

Like Percy? Reyna wonders, and her heart does a flip flop thinking of what the demigod could want, and what to do in turn.

“And Jason,” Lucia says. “Jason Grace.”

Reyna supposes she knew that she’d hear the name again soon, but it still takes a few moments to register. When it does, it shoots down her spine like a bolt of electricity. Reyna stands up suddenly, memos forgotten for the time being. 

“Bring them to me,” is all she says.


	2. New Rome

Annabeth’s breath hitches when they enter New Rome. The whole city is sprawling, with an anachronistic array of architecture that ranges from Spanish Revival-style shops and restaurants, red-hatched roofs and white adobe, to modern-looking bars, and finally to ancient Roman domes and arches. People of all ages laugh and hurry around the streets. She squints, seeing parents with their children, and even a few elderly faces. 

When Annabeth first started seeing monsters as a child, when they started attacking her very mortal family in the very human world, she’d felt like the most broken, demonic little kid ever. Her stepmother had blamed her, she was certain, and she’d imagined that her father had, too. To grow up knowing your ancestry, having parents who are just like you and living in an entire city filled with people just like you… She can barely imagine it. 

She looks at Jason, who himself seems to be struck by a wave of nostalgia or melancholy. His light blue eyes scan the streets, and she wonders if he can recognize anyone down there or not. 

“So,” she whispers, trying to keep her voice quiet, “we come in peace, right?”

Jason looks around. “The Romans are fair. When they see us, they’ll take us to Reyna.”

“Reyna?” Annabeth asks, raising her eyebrows. Jason flushes slightly, and she remembers that he used to be a praetor, and Reyna must be the other one. Oh, so was she the girl that Piper mentioned? 

Jason finds a secluded area of New Rome, a tall rooftop behind a hedge for them to land on. “A bakery,” he says, and then motions for Annabeth to follow him. 

At the far corner of the rooftop, there’s a hatch that should take them down to the bakery itself. Laying low is easier said than done, Annabeth thinks. She’s wearing a plain white shirt and jeans, and Jason is in a toga and hiking boots. It feels for a moment like they’re two kids re-enacting Julius Caesar on a San Francisco rooftop, and Annabeth nearly laughs out loud at the image. 

She manages to keep a straight face, though, as Jason himself motions for her to follow him downstairs. The smell of baked goods, chocolate and spun sugar fill the air, and Annabeth’s mouth begins to water.

They climb into a dark little room with a few dusty crates sitting off to one side and a dim lightbulb smack in the middle of the ceiling. A door opposite the crates leads to a dimly lit hallway, and Annabeth can hear the chatter of voices from the other side. 

“Act casual,” Jason says, “we’re not hiding anything from them. I just didn’t want the entire legion to surround us in the middle of New Rome before we could get a word out.”

 _Alright,_ Annabeth thinks, _act casual. Hey, Romans, this missing son of Jupiter and Greek daughter of Athena just casually flew in from the sky and would like some cocoa and chocolate before we go see your praetor._

Jason, of course, is totally serious as he leads her to the doorway and checks the hall first, before beckoning her out. Annabeth suddenly has the feeling of being surrounded again, of total vulnerability. She’s the Greek, she realizes, the one Greek in an entire city teeming with powerful Roman demigods. If Jason was going to betray her, she wouldn’t stand a chance.

Annabeth gulps visibly when she turns to see that Jason is watching her right now. “Yes?” she says. His eyes flicker for a moment, and she steps back. Her hand instinctively goes to the pocket of her backpack where her dagger is, and he must sense her fear, because he blinks and holds his hands up.

“Annabeth,” he says quietly, “I’m on your side, here.”

Annabeth’s features smooth out, although she still looks tense and suspicious. “Of course,” she says. “You brought me here, right?”

Jason looks off to the side, then nods. “I’m sorry if you don’t feel like you can trust me,” he says softly. “I get that it’s something that has to be earned. That was one of the first things Lupa taught me.”

“Lupa?” Annabeth asks.

Nodding, Jason looks at her with a slight grin. “You know who she is?”

“The wolf goddess that raised Romulus and Remus,” Annabeth says, “yes.”

“And me,” Jason says, “she raised me.”

So Thalia’s younger brother got whisked away to be raised by a wolf? What a childhood. And Annabeth thought that her upbringing took the cake for craziness. 

“You’ll learn more about her when we meet Reyna,” Jason says after another pause, “hopefully you can trust me after that.”

He says it so matter-of-factly, like her discomfort is totally logical. Like he’s not even hurt. The culture surrounding trust and friendship in Rome is different, Annabeth thinks. The campers are warlike, pragmatic. Jason is casual about the tension between them because he’s used to these dynamics. 

“Okay,” Annabeth says, feeling a bit exposed now that Jason’s decided to air out the dirty laundry, “well, let’s get on with it.”

Jason nods as they near the end of the hallway, and the smell of baked goods grows even stronger as the chatter in the room gets louder. “Of course,” a woman says, excitedly, “you have to try the strawberry creme brule. It’s what I taste every time I try ambrosia, now. Every single time.”

Annabeth and Jason near the end of the hall, and the woman speaking turns to them, mouth open. She’s ginger-haired and much older than either Annabeth or Jason, and standing behind the counter with an expression that is both shocked and guarded. Her soft features and round body must put her in her forties or fifties, but her shoulders are squared and posture rigid.

“Penelope Harrison,” Jason says, nodding respectfully, “daughter of Mercury.”

“Praetor Grace,” Penelope breathes. Annabeth looks at her in absolute shock. _This_ woman, she thinks, soft and maternal, standing behind a bakery counter with flour on her hands and overpowering floral perfume, is the mortal child of a god? Mercury, no less. Hermes.

 _That makes you Luke’s sister,_ Annabeth thinks, and a cold fist suddenly feels like it’s gripping her chest. Luke would have _killed_ to live this long. He _tried_ to kill to live this long. Hermes always seemed to love each of his children like a real father would, seemed to genuinely mourn for their deaths. But he let his son bite the big one trying to bring about an apocalypse while his daughter standing here (and many more of his children, Annabeth suspects) grew up and got old and opened little bakeries in demigod cities. 

Penelope’s gaze turns to Annabeth, and she studies her for a moment. Annabeth realizes that she’s been glaring, and tries to smooth out her features. 

“I come from the Greek camp,” Jason says, “and I need to speak with Reyna.”

Penelope looks at Jason, and for a moment Annabeth thinks she sees him flinch, but he quickly recovers. Then Penelope turns her gaze to Annabeth. Annabeth feels a cool shiver run from the tip of her scalp down the rest of her body, and she catches her breath, but when she looks up at Penelope again, the woman’s face is kinder.

“Well,” she says, “you two must have had quite the semester abroad!” 

Then she presses a finger to her temple and is still. Annabeth shifts from foot to foot uncomfortably, looking at Jason, who smiles gently.

“Penelope’s a living lie detector and messaging system, all in one,” he whispers to her. “I knew she’d be the best to talk to first.” 

Annabeth nods, and then Penelope has opened her eyes. “My little girl, Lucia, is a messenger. I’m so proud of her, you know, she got very good marks in training. She’ll take you both to Reyna. Would you like anything while you wait?”

“No, thank you,” Annabeth says quickly, and Jason smiles at Penelope, almost apologetically. 

_Sorry for this paranoid Greek demigod freaking out about everything,_ he’s probably saying, and maybe Penelope telepathically gets the message, because she gestures for Annabeth and Jason to sit down at one of the black wire cafe tables that all little bakeries seem to need while she gets back to work. 

The cafe is small enough that there thankfully has not been much of an audience for their little exchange. A tall, lean and muscular girl who only looks a tad older than Annabeth herself sits across from a boy with curly blonde hair and sunglasses. In the corner, an older man reads a book, as though the entire conversation is totally uninteresting to him.

 _These people,_ Annabeth thinks, _are all children of gods? Or at least legacies?_

The girl in front of them looks from Annabeth to Jason animatedly, and says, “Praetor Grace! You’re back!”

“Er,” Jason says. He clearly doesn’t recognize her, even if she recognizes him. “Yes, I’m back to see--”

“We knew that there would be unrest, oh yes,” the girl says, still babbling. “We knew that ever since the son of Neptune came to camp, yes.”

The son of Neptune? “Percy,” Annabeth gasps before she can stop herself. The man in sunglasses reaches out and catches the woman’s arm. 

“It would be best to stop now,” he says to her, and when she opens her mouth next, no sound comes out. _Like Piper’s charmspeak._

“Child of Apollo?” Jason asks, and the man nods. 

“Both of us, brother and sister,” he says, grinning weakly. “Twins, like our father and Diana. She _was_ going to be an augur, briefly. Where she goes I go, especially after, uh…”

The girl looks around, moving her mouth like she’s trying to speak. Jason nods as though he understands completely. The man doesn’t respond, and for a moment Annabeth wonders if he can see them, or if he’s totally blind. 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Jason says. The man nods. 

“Thank you, Praetor,” he says. “I’m glad that you’re back again.”

Somehow, Annabeth did not account for the more mundane challenges of this mission. Like, say, sitting in a cafe next to a mute clairvoyant and across from Jason. He’s busy looking out the windows, seeing the people go by on their daily business. Then he turns to Annabeth, raising an eyebrow.

“What do you think?” he asks. Annabeth has always been proud of being Greek, yes, but right now she decides to tell the truth.

“It would be nice if we had something like this,” she says, and Jason nods.

“It has its benefits,” he says quietly. 

Penelope plops two mugs of hot chocolate down beside them, and Jason sips his. Annabeth leaves hers untouched, letting it grow cold. If she tells Penelope a lie, says that she’s lactose intolerant or something, then she assumes Penelope will spot it immediately. If she refuses, it will be refusing hospitality-- a horrible insult and not at all becoming of a diplomat. If she drinks the hot chocolate, though, who knows what tricks the Romans have up their sleeve? There has to be another option, Annabeth thinks, and then her eyes fall on Jason, who’s drained his mug and is leaning back in his chair.

“Would you like my hot chocolate?” she asks Jason, and he looks at her. He knows her suspicions, she understands. He has to. Jason wipes a chocolate mustache from his face, nods, and grins at her. “Cheers,” he says, before sipping her drink, too. Annabeth catches Penelope’s eye from behind the counter, and smiles at her. Penelope smiles back.

After a minute or two, a young girl with frizzy red hair, the spitting image of Penelope herself, bursts through the door.

“Praetor Grace,” she says, and bows deeply. Jason smiles at her. “Hello, Lucia.”

Lucia straightens and fixes Annabeth with an intense stare, though no chill comes across Annabeth as one had when Lucia’s mother did so. “Lucia Sotero,” she says, “legacy to Mercury and Ceres.”

“Annabeth Chase,” Annabeth says, and glances at Jason. “daughter of Athena.”

Speaking the Greek name _Athena,_ Annabeth feels as though she’s broken an oath to Styx herself, especially with the silence that falls over the room. Looking around, everyone seems to be watching her. Penelope, Lucia, Apollo’s twins that have both leaned in to hear the conversation better, and even the old man in the corner is staring at Annabeth now, book set face-down on the table in front of him. 

Everyone is looking at her besides Jason, anyways, who is again gazing wistfully out the window. Then Lucia coughs and says, “This way.”

Jason snaps out of his reverie and follows Lucia and Annabeth out the door. Annabeth’s heart is pounding a mile a minute and she feels her pulse in every part of her body. This isn’t fighting a Titan or slaying a harpy. This isn’t getting shit on by metal birds. 

This is meeting the child of another pantheon, and this is _finally_ seeing Percy again. 

___

They make their way out of new Rome quickly and efficiently. There are paths to quickly move from one corner of the camp to the next, and Annabeth wouldn’t have expected anything less of the Romans. 

“We’re going to the Principia,” Lucia says, “that is where the Praetors would like to meet you.”

“Praetors?” Jason asks. “May I ask who replaced me?”

Lucia nods. “Of course, Praetor Grace.”

She looks out to the path ahead. “A son of Mars sits in your place.”

“Julius?” Jason asks, and Lucia shakes her head.

“His name,” she says, “is Frank Zhang. He has not been with us long, but…”

She hesitates, and looks nervously at Jason. Annabeth remembers how rule-bound the Romans are supposed to be, and she wonders if this Frank Zhang is an unusual choice for the position. If Jason doesn’t know who he is (and Lucia doesn’t seem to expect him to) then Annabeth imagines that Frank can’t have been with Jupiter for more than seven months.

“...these times give men novel opportunities to prove themselves,” Lucia finishes hastily. They near the Principia, and Annabeth’s breath catches in her throat again. The pulse in her mouth nearly stops. 

Guards line the front of the Principia, which appears to be a white-marble, two-story callback to ancient Roman banks. Portico columns line the front wall, and Annabeth briefly wonders how it was designed. Did they copy the plans right out of Roman models? If she squints, she can see Spanish colonial influence in the archway designs, which is common enough in California, but what about--

“Praetor Grace,” a guard who only looks to be about fifteen comes forward and drops to his knee. He then catches Annabeth’s eye and drops his head in a small bow to her. 

“Annabeth Chase,” Annabeth says. “Greek demigod.”

The guard’s eyes don’t change, but he nods. “Daughter of Athena.”

“Er,” Annabeth says, “yes. Of course.”

We have ways of reading you, the guard’s wary gaze seems to say as he leads Jason, Annabeth, and Lucia down the hall. 

The inside of the Principia is white and gleaming polished marble, and the walls are draped in purple velvet. Camp Jupiter’s signature colors, Annabeth thinks. Jason nudges her arm and gestures to a sparkling mosaic in front of them.

 _Romulus and Remus,_ Annabeth thinks, looking at the two young men depicted in the mosaic. And the snarling wolf standing between the two…

“That’s Lupa,” Jason whispers. “And Romulus and Remus, they are…”

“...My brothers,” a voice calls from the side of the room. Jason and Annabeth both look up to who’s spoken. “Sons of Mars.”

The boy is tall and well-built. He looks to be of East Asian descent, with short black hair that’s almost in a buzz cut and a square jaw. But his jaw is tense, and his eyes watchful when he studies the two of them. Knowing that he must not have been in Camp Jupiter long, Annabeth infers that he feels insecure meeting Jason. Still, with his padded armor and imperial cape, if she hadn’t known otherwise, she would not have thought him to be an amateur demigod new to the Legion.

Jason drops to one knee. “Praetor Zhang.”

“Praetor Grace,” Frank Zhang says, “It’s an honor to meet you.”

“Likewise,” says Jason, although when he looks at Frank, his eyes are narrow. Frank seems to pick up on Jason’s suspicions, because he squares his shoulders again and presses his mouth in a firm line.

Frank turns to Annabeth now. “Daughter of Athena,” he says, his gaze softening. Annabeth’s heart does a somersault. Why is he looking at her like that? Has he met Percy-- and has Percy mentioned _her?_

“Praetor Zhang,” Annabeth says, dropping her knee as well. “Thank you for hearing us.”

Frank coughs awkwardly. “It’s...only the right thing to do,” he says, and then nods to the back of the building.

“This way,” he says. “My partner will see you now.”

“Reyna,” Jason breathes, just loud enough for Annabeth to pick up on it. Lucia quietly bids them farewell, and then Jason gives Annabeth an indecipherable glance before walking side by side with her, behind Frank, to see the Praetor Reyna, whoever she is. 

___

Frank leads the two of them to a long back room with more purple banners lining the sides. He closes the door firmly behind the two of them when they enter.

At the end of the room is a small marble table and four chairs. Three are empty, and in the fourth a young woman about the age of Annabeth herself sits, upright and regal, with two statues on either side of her. They look like greyhounds, except one seems to be made of pure silver, and the other gold. 

Then the two statues stir and growl as Annabeth walks closer to them, and the girl puts a finger out to stop them. Her dark eyes glisten as she looks at Jason, and looking over, Annabeth sees Jason’s expression shift, too. It’s open, more vulnerable than she’s usually seen of him in the past. He looks like he’s been hit with a bucket of ice water.

“Praetor Ramirez-Arellano,” Jason says, falling to his knee, and Annabeth copies him out a moment later.

“Jason,” Reyna says, her voice soft. Then she sees Annabeth and seems to collect herself.

“Daughter of Athena,” she says, “Greek demigod. My name is Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano. I am the female praetor of Camp Jupiter.”

She gestures to Frank, and says, “and I am glad that Praetor Zhang has been so kind as to introduce us.”

Frank blushes and mutters, “I’ve been praetor for all of two days, guys.”

Reyna nods to Annabeth and Jason. “I trust that you have a reason for coming here, yes?”

Jason clears his throat, and nods. “There’s…a lot I need to tell you, Reyna.” Reyna does not look surprised. In fact, her expression only changes when she glances at Annabeth. A small frown passes over her face, and for a moment her eyes flicker mournfully. Then she looks back at Jason. She gestures to the three empty seats in front of her.

“There is much that we must tell you about, as well, Jason. Everyone, please sit.”

___

Neither Reyna nor Frank, sitting down on either side of the stone table, seem to bat an eye as Annabeth explains the Prophecy of the Seven, as Jason discusses showing up at Camp Halfblood and realizing that it was the work of Hera, or Juno. They discuss how Jason’s new allies had sent Gaea back into slumber for a short period of time, and how he’d recovered his memory of Camp Jupiter in the process.

There is a long pause afterwards, and then Frank coughs and says, “Alright, well now it’s time for our side of the story.”

He explains that he arrived at Camp Jupiter only recently, but when he did so, another new arrival showed up out of the blue just a few weeks later.

“He didn’t remember anything either,” Frank says, and Annabeth leans in. She knows what he’s going to say next. “He said that his name was Percy, and that he was the...son of Neptune.”

“Percy,” Annabeth cuts in, “yes. Where is he now?”

Frank’s expression falls, and Reyna holds a hand out, placing it on Frank’s shoulder. The pulse that’s been beating rapidly in Annabeth’s throat suddenly falters, and she feels like she’s swallowing her heart when she tries to bite back a sob. Her face goes blank, and beside her, Jason eyes her with concern.

“I don’t know,” Frank says after a pause. “We went on a quest, me and Percy, and a girl…” 

He falters again, and then tries to pick up where he left off, “We went to free Thanatos from Alcyoneus. The girl, Hazel, was a daughter of Pluto. She was, uh…”

Pluto, or Hades. Annabeth’s eyebrows must quirk up in surprise, because Reyna nods at her. 

“Pluto was not supposed to father any children since World War II,” she says, “but Hazel was sired before then. She was revived when the Doors of Death were opened.”

Like Nico and Bianca, Annabeth thinks. Typical of Hades’ children, not to be all that good at dying. 

“She had died in Alaska,” Frank says, “and when we got there again, the Earth, it…”

He swallows hard, his eyes beginning to water. Beside him, Reyna gives him a sympathetic glance, and then briefly meets Annabeth’s wide eyes before looking away quickly.

“It swallowed them up, both Percy and Hazel,” Frank says at last, and the words come out in a quick, breathless succession. “I don’t know where they are.”

“They are not presumed dead,” Reyna adds, “tell them why, Frank.”

“Yes,” Annabeth says before she can stop herself, “tell me why!”

Frank looks at Reyna, then nods. “I had to find him myself. Thanatos, I was alone. I thought they were dead. I was sure…”

Tears begin to well up in his eyes, but Frank does not brush them off or even seem to acknowledge them. He gazes off into the empty corner of the room across from him, like he sees something that no one else sees. 

“I unchained him. And then Alcyoneus, he… well, he was made of metal, jewels. Gold. All that. Hazel’s own niche, I guess. And he had soldier ghosts, his minions, who all carried imperial gold with them. I thought she was dead, but when they attacked me, their weapons dropped. Alcyoneus himself seemed dazed, a little confused. He was cursing the daughter of Pluto and son of Neptune. I managed to knock him out of, well, Alaska, and deal the finishing blow.

“The Doors of Death are still open, though,” Frank says, “that’s the best I can figure. I don’t know how she’s defying Gaea, but Hazel is still out there. And I think Percy is, too.”

There is a heavy, oppressive silence after Frank finishes speaking. Annabeth keeps her gaze on the table, where Reyna’s hands are clasped tightly. She does not respond when one hand reaches out to squeeze her own, just looks down at her sweaty palms and says nothing even when Reyna tries to speak.

“I don’t doubt your virtue, Annabeth Chase,” Reyna says, “and I know that there is a reason that we’re meeting. We have powerful demigods in both of our camps who have been caught in the Earth. But that’s why we’ll join forces. Just as Juno would have it.”

Annabeth looks up at Reyna, and nods mutely. Reyna looks over at Frank. “Praetor Zhang,” she says, “is one of the Seven that you’ve mentioned. We’ll convene soon with the Senate to discuss correspondence between the Greek and Roman camps.”

“Well,” Jason says, “first things first. We have a stranded flying trireme sitting in the middle of California. And Nyx may also be out to kill us.”

Reyna looks at him, her mouth hanging open slightly before she regains her composure.

“Right,” she says, “well, yes, first things first, then. The council will be accelerated. We’ll rescue your friends tomorrow.”

_______________ 

Annabeth sits at Minerva’s shrine. She does not know how Minerva feels about her, if she sees her as her own child, or a completely unrelated demigod. If she cares that Annabeth has just about lost one of her favorite people ever, and may never get him back. When Annabeth looks into the statue’s eyes, she can see nothing but unfeeling marble.

Her sneakers silently scuff the ground as she sits on the bench under the shrine’s dome, studying the offerings that have been burnt to Minerva lately. What do the Romans ask her for?

“She is not the Goddess of War,” a voice says behind Annabeth, “like she is to the Greeks. We offer her sacrifice and worship for our studies, our buildings, and our arts.”

Annabeth says nothing, barely responds, as Reyna sits down beside her. Her gold and silver greyhounds flank either side of the bench, the silver one sitting next to Annabeth. They sit in silence for a time, before Reyna speaks again.

“Minerva has no children of her own,” Reyna says, “so children of Athena have no Roman counterparts.”

“I was not looking for any siblings in this camp,” Annabeth says, voice tight and gruff. She has been crying for hours, sitting alone in Minerva’s shrine, but she won’t admit that to Reyna.

“I was just saying,” Reyna begins, then pauses. “I wanted to know why you were here. With Minerva.”

“There’s nowhere else to be,” Annabeth says, “not right now.”

Reyna nods slowly, then says, “We would like your input in the Senate’s decision with regards to Camp Halfblood’s correspondence. And, of course, the rescue mission.”

Annabeth’s mouth quirks up formally. “Thank you,” she says, although she doesn’t mean it.

When she glances at Reyna again, Reyna is studying her with a colder expression than she expected. “What?” Annabeth says, and Reyna winces.

“Nothing important,” she says, and the dogs both stir slightly at her words. 

“Reyna-- Praetor Ramirez-Arellano,” Annabeth says, “if we want a healthy partnership, I _cannot_ keep secrets from you. Nor can you from me. I trust you understand the significance of that.”

Reyna is quiet, and then says, “Annabeth Chase, I have no wish to provoke you, right now.”

Annabeth stiffens, and Reyna quickly continues, “You defeated Circe and freed the pirates on her island. They became immune to her magic, and dominated us. I was there, and I suffered the consequences.”

She stands suddenly, and her expression and posture are formal again. “I understand why you would wish to do such a thing, especially because one you cared for was in danger.”

 _She talked to Percy about this._ Annabeth thinks, and her chest feels tight. 

“I am merely stating,” Reyna continues, “why we may have some...lingering friction.”

Annabeth blinks up at her. Yes, she had tricked Circe, to save Percy from becoming a guinea pig. She had barely thought about the other girls with Circe, some as young as nine or ten. Annabeth’s mouth feels dry when she looks up into Reyna’s eyes. She’d unleashed full grown men on them. She’d…

Reyna’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts. “I have only met one other child of Athena before you, and it was on that island. He was half-mad when we met him. I suppose he escaped too, when the men were freed from Circe's grip. Filial piety is a virtue, so I will not fault you for it.”

She is quiet again, and then nods to her dogs. “Argentum and Aurum,” she says, and then turns to Annabeth. 

“Jason has told me that he is the brother of a Greek daughter of Zeus. Thalia Grace,” she says, “do you know of this woman?”

“Yes,” Annabeth says, and she notes the way that Reyna watches the dogs’ expressions out of the corner of her eye before nodding, like she accepts Annabeth’s response.

“And what is she doing now?” Reyna asks.

“She’s a Hunter of Artemis,” Annabeth says, “immortal now. An eternal maiden.”

Reyna again glances covertly at the dogs, then nods. Annabeth wonders if they’re like Penelope from the bakery. Living lie detectors, Jason had said.

“Argentum and Aurum can tell when you are lying,” Reyna says, as if intuiting Annabeth's thoughts. Maybe she _can_ do that, Annabeth thinks vaguely, maybe that's another Roman demigod ability. _Or, obviously, she could just be observant._ “try it. Tell me two truths and a lie.”

“Two truths and a lie?” Annabeth says. Her instincts about the dogs were good, which isn't much of a surprise, but Reyna's suggestion _is_ a surprise. It’s almost like they’re at a college orientation. “My father’s name is Timothy.”

The silver hound next to her lashes out and snarls at Annabeth. She leaps up on top of the bench on instinct, before Reyna shushes it. The hound sits down as if nothing has happened, but its beady red eyes stare at Annabeth silently.

“That was the lie?” Reyna asks. “What is his real name?”

Annabeth keeps her face calm. “Darrel.”

Both dogs leap and growl at Annabeth this time, who holds her hands up. Reyna quiets them again.

“Please tell me the truth now, Annabeth,” she says, and Annabeth looks down at Reyna. She’s still standing on top of the bench.

“The truth,” she says, “is that I don’t know why I should give you my father’s name.”

The dogs are silent, and Reyna nods. “I merely wished to demonstrate their ability to you, Annabeth. It will be useful to know during the meeting tonight.”

“When is the meeting tonight?” asks Annabeth.

“Eight o’clock,” Reyna says. “This alliance is a breach of an oath on the River Styx. But these are exceptional circumstances.”

She hesitates, and then says, “My mother is Bellona, Goddess of War, and Mars’s twin sister. Frank Zhang is my cousin, and my mother has asked that I make sure he is put in good hands.”

Annabeth stiffens when she sees Reyna looking her up and down. Then Reyna nods again, like she’s seen everything she needs to of Annabeth, and says, “Remember: we will see you at eight tonight, in the Senate building. You will be housed in the Principia. Wear clean clothes.”

As though she was talking about picking Annabeth up to go to the movies. Then she walks off, her dogs trailing behind her. Their gold and silver pelts glisten in the daylight.

____

Annabeth must be losing her mind, thinking that being housed in the Praetor headquarters means that she’s an honored guest. She is led up a flight of stairs and shown a spacious bedroom that is nonetheless Spartan-bare. A single twin bed lies in the center of the room, alongside a small desk and dresser. The door shuts behind her and she hears a click.

 _I’m a suspicious guest,_ she thinks, _practically a prisoner._

She quickly drops her backpack and changes into a long-sleeved shirt and black dress pants. At least she had had the foresight to bring something formal to Jupiter, she thinks to herself. Then she hears a knock on the door. 

“Ms. Chase,” a guard calls out, “we are ready to escort you. Please be out within five minutes.”

Annabeth leans back and looks at her watch. At the five minute mark exactly, the door flings open and two guards stand before her. She walks with them down the stairs and to the Senate building. 

On the path, she hears footsteps behind her and murmured voices, one of which is Jason’s. The other is Reyna’s. Annabeth cranes to overhear what they’re discussing, but a guard gives her a disapproving look and beckons her onward. 

The Senate building is round and polished marble, with what looks like round stone bleachers in the center. Nine people sit in place, looking as sober as the statues Annabeth saw at the shrines. Annabeth sees Frank among them, who shoots her a sympathetic glance. A skinny blonde boy watches her out of the corner of his eye, looking irritated.

The guards lead Annabeth to the center of the room, and one places a hand on her shoulder. Reyna and Jason come up behind Annabeth, Jason standing by her side while Reyna takes the tenth seat on the stone bleachers.

“Praetor Grace has been questioned,” Reyna says, “and found truthful. As has Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena.”

The senators look Annabeth up and down, and a few murmur to one another when they look at Jason. 

“Please state your case,” Reyna says, “for the council to hear.”

“My name,” Annabeth begins, “is Annabeth Chase.”

Okay, right, they knew that. “I’m Athena’s child, and--”

The blonde boy who was eyeing her earlier quickly cuts Annabeth off.

“You,” he says, narrowing his eyes, “are a child of Minerva? The virgin goddess? She would never break her vow of chastity.”

“I was a brain child,” Annabeth says, jaw clenched. “Just as my mother-- Athena, not Minerva-- was born from the mind of Zeus, I am born from the pure love and shared intellect of my mother and father.”

“You really believe that?” the boy says, “And I’m guessing that you think the rest of us come from a cabbage patch.”

“She’s not lying, Octavian,” Jason says. His voice is calm, although looking over at Jason, Annabeth thinks she can feel some hostility coming from him. Who wouldn’t want to punch this Octavian guy in the face? “I met many children of Athena in the Greek camp. Things are different there.”

Annabeth glances at Argentum and Aurum, and so do half the senators. The dogs are still, and Octavian slinks back in his seat. 

“Using inflammatory language is inappropriate,” a girl near the center of the bleachers says. “Please be more considerate in your choice of words.”

“All I wanted to point out is that if this _is_ true, then Minerva seems to take her vows much more seriously than her Greek counterpart,” Octavian says, and an uneasy ripple of discussion breaks out over the other senators. Annabeth glances at Jason, who only looks her way once, and then looks back at Reyna. _Was I looking for sympathy?_ Annabeth wonders. She realizes that she’s disappointed at Jason for not speaking back to Octavian, but the whole senate seems to discourage qualitative discussion. 

The rest of the meeting becomes a blur when Annabeth tries to think about it later. There is the usual story that she’s rehearsed for months, and then much discussion of Percy, Percy, Percy. Jason talks about Thalia, and the dogs stay still as he does so. The color drains from Annabeth’s face the longer she speaks. Reyna shoots her a concerned look once or twice. By the time the meeting concludes, Annabeth feels faint and dizzy, and a guard puts a hand on her shoulder to steady her as she walks back to the Principia.

She thinks that they’ve won, though. Back in her quarters, she puts her head between her knees and bolts upright when she hears another knock on the door.

“Annabeth?” it’s Jason’s voice. Annabeth didn’t want anyone to come check on her. She’d wanted to be alone, but she knows the Romans won’t much care. And even if she’s felt uneasy around Jason for a long time, she hates to admit that he’s probably the one person she would choose to be with her right now, if she had to pick.

“The lock opens from the outside,” she says weakly, “but if you want my permission, come on in.”

The door swings open, and Jason enters the room carrying a bag of food. He glances at the door, and whispers, “Do you want this closed?”

Annabeth can only nod weakly. Jason closes the door without a word, and then sits on the ground. Annabeth is leaned back against the wall on her bed.

“Would you like anything to eat?” Jason asks. Annabeth looks over at him, and sees him producing mounds of food from his bag. Boxed soup and doughnuts, poultry and cooked meat. The smell of it alone is practically enough to revive her. 

“Yes,” is all she says. He doesn’t smile, but his eyes soften as he looks at her. Annabeth averts her gaze. She does not want his pity, not right now.

First they discuss the outcome of the meeting: a connection between Chiron and Reyna will be pursued, courtesy of Mercury’s children. Some of them have already unwittingly been connecting with the children of Hermes, apparently. Now it’s time to put that to good use.

“Reyna has also sent supplies for us when we head back. Frank will come too, being part of the Seven. Leila and Dakota might come, they’ll tell us in the morning.”

If Annabeth is supposed to know these names, she pretends to, nodding vacantly. 

“Oh,” Jason says, “and I’m sorry about Octavian. We can’t really fight during those meetings, or get off topic, but he tries to anyways. He’s just an asshole.”

Annabeth nods vacantly again, and Jason looks down, pretending to read the instructions for a pack of instant ramen, though he never goes to heat any up. The conversation rolls to its conclusion, and they focus on the food. Annabeth eats two donuts and knocks it back with lemon Gatorade (with electrolytes, the label brags. Roman legionnaires probably need all the electrolytes they can get). After some silence, Annabeth finally decides to speak. “Argentum and Aurum seem to think that you’re right, about Thalia.”

Jason stops mid-sip of his beef stew, spoon still sticking out of his mouth, and raises his eyebrows. 

He swallows quickly, and then sets the spoon down. “Pardon?”

“About being Thalia’s long-lost younger brother.”

“Oh,” Jason says, and his eyes crinkle for a moment. “You...still didn’t believe that?”

Annabeth shrugs. “I couldn’t know, Jason. False memories had a tendency to follow you wherever you went.”

Jason tries to smile, although it comes out forced. “Seems fair enough.”

“I’m still being held prisoner up here,” Annabeth grumbles, and Jason says, “The Principia? Oh, well, you can’t live with the praetors. I got kicked out of the praetors’ living quarters because Frank is up there now. I’m just as locked up as you are.”

Annabeth is quiet. 

“You still don’t trust me?” Jason asks. “I can show you my room. If you-- um.”

His face flushes like he just said something awful. “Not like that,” he says quickly. Annabeth eats her bagel quietly, unimpressed.

“Like what?”

Jason’s face is still confused. “Well, not like, you know. I’m not, like…being weird.”

“I didn’t think you were. Not until now,” Annabeth says, then raises her chin. “If I snuck into your room, that wouldn’t look good to the Romans, though.”

“Probably not,” Jason agrees, and another tense silence stretches between them. Then Jason speaks again. 

“What was Thalia like, growing up?” His question takes Annabeth aback. She looks up, imagining her friend’s laughing blue eyes and freckled face. Thalia, the big sister she never had. But that Jason did have. Or should have had. What should Annabeth say?

“Well,” she begins, “she wasn’t like you at all, save the lightning powers and all. She loved breaking rules, and she was super into punk style-clothing until she decided to don the Artemis garb.”

Jason’s mouth quirks up slightly, which is one of the closest things he’ll get to laughing out loud, Annabeth thinks. “Yeah, I’m a real stick in the mud. I know, I’ve heard it before.”

Annabeth smiles in spite of herself and continues.

“She was brave, obviously. Kind, courageous. She turned herself into a tree to protect the camp, did you know about that? And she always looked after me, when I was a kid.”

Jason’s expression falls. “Right,” he says. “So was she the cool big sister? The kind who’d beat your bullies up? Or the kind who’d beat you up for missing curfew?”

Annabeth laughs, in spite of the day she’s had. “The former, mostly. Only the latter if she thought monsters were gonna eat you. But…”

She looks at Jason now, really _looks_ at him. He always seemed so earnest, sincere. _Too_ sincere, she used to imagine. But when Annabeth studies him, sitting across her on the floor with a half-eaten banana nut muffin crumbling in his lap, his eyes-- light blue, like the morning sky, not the bluish green color that makes her sick now because it reminds her of Percy-- look genuinely sad. He’s lost someone too, she thinks. He lost everyone. Camp Jupiter, Reyna, his mother, and his sister are _all_ his Percy. As she gazes into those sad eyes, they look back at her, and she thinks she feels a small jolt of electricity run across the carpet and up her ankle.

“...Well,” she continues, “she always seemed like she was missing someone.”

She pauses, then says, “You have met before, right?”

“Yeah,” Jason says, “briefly.”

His expression becomes formal again, and Annabeth has the image of two polished marble doors swinging shut in her face, melding into the wall like they were never there. 

“Thank you for the food,” she says quietly. “It’s helped a lot.”

Jason smiles, and says, “Thank you for the company.”

He gets up and brushes himself off. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Annabeth. We’ll need all the sleep we can get for tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth says, and Jason looks at her again. 

“I won’t let anything happen,” he says. He doesn’t finish his sentence, and the words hang in the air like an incomplete prophecy. 

_I won’t let anything happen...to you?_ Annabeth thinks _To us? To Piper and Leo and Hedge? To the mission? To the world?_

 _Or to Percy?_ she wonders to herself, although she doubts that Jason means to say _that_.

Annabeth stands up and grabs Jason’s arm. He looks up at her, startled, as she gives him a brief side hug. Nothing intimate, heck, she’s hugged Leo for longer when they were saying goodbye, but she feels an uncomfortable spark of something prickle her skin when it touches his. Maybe just static from their clothes. When she pulls back, his blue eyes roam her face briefly, and he looks like he wants to say something to her, but decides on, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Annabeth says. She thinks Jason feels loyalty to his friends and allies, and she hopes that he feels something enough for her and the rest of Camp Halfblood to make good on his promise, whatever he meant by it.

Her mind is tired and wired at the same time from today, and when she lies down, she chants a mental mantra until she falls asleep.

_I won’t let anything happen to you, Percy. Wherever you are._

She says it over and over until she’s saying it to Percy himself, face to face with him in her dreams, and she leans in to kiss him before he vanishes again, into the dark ink of her sleep.


	3. Earth Magic Roller Coaster Ride

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so with this chapter I've tried to do as much research as I can with Leila and Melinoe (I have the Demigod Files on hand). I've extrapolated on Leila's abilities because she's such a minor character, and worked with the differences between Ceres and Demeter. 
> 
> Also, I'm writing from Jason's POV this time. I'll alternate between the two.

Jason’s eyes close, but he’s not sure how long he sleeps. For several nights now, his thoughts have raced around in his mind as he tries to shut them off, and after what feels like an hour or two, it’s morning. He must sleep, he thinks, at some point, but still the days are long and fuzzy, and going to bed gives him little respite.

Tonight, though, in his own secure quarters in the Principia, his thoughts seep from his mind without him trying. Then Jason sees _her,_ the mysterious woman who had woken him up from sleep during Leo’s mysterious bout of pyromania. 

She looks beautiful, as goddesses tend to do. She could be twenty or she could be forty. Half of her is pure black, with flowing black hair, and half is totally white, with a curtain of white hair flowing down the other side of her body. However, both of her eyes are an eerie, pure white without pupils. 

“Jason Grace,” she says, “we meet again.”

“Melinoe,” Jason says to the goddess, and she chuckles. 

“Yes,” Melinoe says, “did Athena’s child tell you?”

“I read about you when I got back to New Rome,” Jason says. It’s true, he found a book on Greek pantheons in the classified section of New Rome’s library. Being a former praetor still carried some respectability in New Rome.

“What do you know?” Melinoe asks, and she gives Jason a whimsical smile. Half of her teeth are pearly white, and the other a glossy black. Jason’s dream body does not react, but if he were awake, he’s sure he would have tensed and drawn back on instinct. “We have all night to sit and talk, after all.”

“The underworld goddess of ghosts,” Jason says, “and of nightmares.” Melinoe lowers her head and waits for a moment before smiling and laughing out one, sharp laugh.

“How respectful this one is,” she says to herself, as though Jason isn’t there. Then she turns her head up and her opaque white eyes fall back to him. “I would have expected something sassy from your friends. ‘You look like both’ or another clever line. I have to say, I don’t meet the Roman demigods very much, but you lot are far more pleasant to be around than the Greek children.”

Jason nods, and says only, “Thank you.” He does not feel very grateful, but Melinoe laughs again. 

“Oh, you’re only too welcome for my little insult towards your _friends,”_ she says, leaning closer. Jason studies her, her too-wide grin and crinkled, sneering eyes. Melinoe, like Annabeth said, does not appear to be a friend. Maybe an ally at most. Not someone trustworthy at all, and he suspects that she wants to provoke him with her words. He stays quiet until Melinoe draws back.

“My job is no fun at all,” she says, “not anymore. The Doors of Death are open. No one is calling on _me_ to send spirits into the world of the living. The ghosts themselves-- they _all_ disrespect me so.”

She leans in again, conspiratorially. If she was a living woman, Jason would be able to feel her breath on his face, but Melinoe does not seem to breathe. The air around them is dead. “Thanatos was released from his chains, but it does him no good. The Doors of Death remain open, and the coward refuses to venture into Tartarus.”

Here, Melinoe raises her eyebrows, as if waiting for Jason to say something. He remains still, and she pouts a bit and continues. “And Gaea was so cruel, she did not even consider my feelings when she took over the gateway between Hades and Earth. I don’t even think she thinks me a threat. So cruel.”

She pauses again expectantly, but when Jason does not speak, she smiles and says, “You keep those cards close to your chest, don’t you, oh child of Jupiter?”

One long, pasty white fingernail touches Jason’s chest. He tries to back away, but he feels immobile, suspended in the dreamscape. “But I can see your cards,” Melinoe says. “And I want you to help me. I have made my amends to your bloodline, but my father is still most angry with me. I suppose I will have to look out for my baby sister if I want him to be pleased with me again. And, of course, I would like my ghosts back.”

Melinoe was the child of Hades and Persephone. Or, for the Romans, Pluto and Persepina. “Your sister,” Jason slowly says, “that you’re referring to...is Hazel?”

“Yes, yes,” Melinoe says excitedly, “finally you speak, Jason Grace. Yes, and she is a friend of yours as well. She’s fighting Gaea, but she is growing weak. And so is her little friend…”

Melinoe must be trying to deduce something from Jason’s expressions, and intuitively he’s learned to keep his emotional responses to a minimum. Still, Hazel’s big, innocent golden eyes flash through his mind. He had been a praetor when he knew her, and she’d seemed like a child to him. Powerful beyond belief, with her lineage, but sweet and gentle in spite of her power. She was mocked mercilessly by the other legionnaires, though. Jason had tried to keep his temper when other recruits displayed poor behavior around her, but in his heart of hearts he’d wished that Hazel could open up the Earth and swallow the other kids whole. 

But now, Hazel herself had been swallowed by the Earth. If Jason had the opportunity to rescue her, he would take it. She was his friend, and also his charge as a new legionnaire.  
“...The son of Poseidon…not your pantheon, Grace, but your new friends would certainly care. Especially the one sleeping next to you,” Melinoe continues, pulling Jason out of his thoughts with a jolt.

“What?” Jason asks, again trying and failing to draw back. Melinoe shrugs, amused. “In the _next room over,_ I mean. You have a bit of a bawdy inclination for someone so stoic, Grace,” she murmurs, looking off to the side. (Or Jason thinks she is; it’s difficult to tell with her pure white eyes.) “The child of Athena wishes to be haunted. If I went over to her and took Jackson’s likeness, I could have all sorts of fun with her clever little head.”

Jason grits his teeth. “Don’t do that,” he says, and Melinoe raises another eyebrow. 

“Oh,” she says, “well, all great heroes are loyal to their friends. Until they’re not, that is.

“I am offering you...patronage for my services,” she says, “I want to save my sister and my own domain. You want your allies… I’m sorry, _best friends in the whole universe_ to be safe again. Correct?”

There is a silence while Jason tries to process Melinoe’s words. Beware of ghosts that haunt you by day, was what she had said the last time they’d spoken. Gods have a tendency to be fickle like that, and to be difficult for the sake of being difficult. But now he starts to discern what she’d meant. Melinoe brings ghosts out at night, but now they’re disobeying her and seeping through into the land of the living at any time.

“Where are Percy and Hazel? Why are they...in the earth?” Jason asks. Melinoe waves a hand. 

“My sister was supposed to be dead,” she says, “but if you haven’t noticed already, children of our father are pretty good at cheating death. She’s running loose around Hades right now, and even I wouldn’t dare to tread near where she’s going. The underworld really doesn’t seem to like me anymore. I suspect my little brother that you may have also met played a role in her...situation, but he’s _not_ answering my calls. Very rude, just because I may have tortured him _once._ I’ll try to scout out more information, though, if it’s helpful.”

 _Helpful._ Yeah, Melinoe sounds like a really nice, helpful lady.

“What about Percy Jackson...the son of Poseidon?” Jason asks. Melinoe laughs.

“Well, that’s your problem. I’ll get you where you want to go, and I’ll help you with Hazel Levesque,” she says. “But Jackson is Gaea’s very favorite, and I’m not trying my luck with her to get him back. I suspect that Hazel may help you if you find her in time, though.”

“Is there any further obligation on my part?” Jason asks. Melinoe doesn’t seem to care about Hazel herself, so much as appeasing their father, and he wonders how much more Melinoe will try to glean from this partnership. He keeps his face calm, but Melinoe’s own face contorts into another grin. She holds her arm over her chest, wrist limp. If you ever want to know who has the real power in a conversation, Reyna had once told Jason, look at who isn’t trying to seem strong. Melinoe is certain of her control over this exchange, Jason thinks, yet he stands straighter to face her. 

“Oh, that’s such a _pragmatic_ thing to consider,” she says, “well, just that if you fail, I won’t like you. And if you _die,_ I might use your likeness to...well, I’ll get to it when I get to it. But you don’t really need to be _told_ that. If you died on this rescue mission, or quest, or prophecy, or what have you… I’d salvage what I could from your legacy. I would salvage your ghost. It’s only common sense. Oh, and I’m only telling you this now so you know to trust me later.”

She lowers her gaze and holds out one slick black palm. “You _do_ trust me, now, don’t you?”

Jason looks at her. Trust. Lupa _has_ told him that trust had to be earned, not given. That much is true. But there are levels to trust, aren’t there? Reyna trusts that it is prudent to correspond with the Greeks and help Jason’s friends out of California, but he can see in her posture and expressions with Annabeth, and even-- though it pains him to admit-- him, that she does not have undying faith in them or the Greek camp. Piper and Leo trust Jason because there’s not much else to trust in. Hera made their whole friendship up out of thin air, _manufactured_ trust amongst the three of them. You can’t throw those feelings away, Jason thinks, especially not after your fake best friend/boyfriend almost died to help you on your quest. 

But manufactured trust crumbles. His throat clenches when he thinks of Piper’s beautiful, teary kaleidoscope eyes. What will she be like when he comes back for her? What about Leo, always laughing, always trying to keep things lighthearted-- what will _he_ think of Jason?

And then there’s Annabeth. Annabeth didn’t even try with Jason, not at first. Her gray eyes were cold as steel when she met him initially, and he doesn’t blame her. When he spoke or moved or did much of anything on Argo II, she’d tense up, watchful, waiting. Though he hid this, it had made him annoyed at her, at first. He had been trying his hardest to win the respect of everyone at Camp Halfblood, to figure out who he was while upholding his relationships with Piper and Leo, and frankly, looking at Annabeth had reminded him of losing Thalia. Maybe looking at _him_ reminded her of losing Percy. Jason had tried to be fair, and he'd reminded himself that even if they'd had some friction, at least he thought he stood on fairly steady ground when it came to how much Annabeth had trusted him (read: not at all). 

But he’d had to hand it to her: she still worked well on the ship. Piper didn’t even pick up on that friction, in spite of her emotional intuition, and together he and Annabeth had already driven away man-eating birds, navigated through rural California to Camp Jupiter with nothing but the backpacks on their backs, and convinced the Roman Camp to seek an alliance with the Greeks in spite of centuries of division and secrecy, sworn on the River Styx. Not bad for a girl who hadn’t given out her trust to Jason like a welcome present. Working trust, trust by necessity, seemed to be different from deep personal faith in someone else.

Jason isn’t sure if Melinoe can tell if he’s lying. Some of the gods are better at that discernment than others. But now he shakes her hand and gives her a small smile. 

“Yes,” he says, “I trust you, as much as you show me that I should. And that I can.”

For a moment, he’s afraid that Melinoe will scowl or spit at him, and he’ll find his soul or psyche thrown down into some invisible pit of Hades. But Melinoe nods approvingly.

“Smart one, Jason Grace. _People-smart,”_ she says, “that’s a good thing to be, with the adventure you’re in for.”

Then she disappears and Jason sinks into a dreamless sleep.

___

The next morning, Jason wakes up at 6:30 am sharp, like his body has already adapted to the strict, punctual circadian rhythms of the Roman camp. At least he slept well, he thinks, but as he dresses and checks his equipment, Melinoe’s conversation floats back into his mind. 

He’d offered her his trust and partnership, because her reasoning for their deal had seemed straightforward enough. Self-centered, but straightforward. But Melinoe has been persuaded to turn coats before, and even if Jason thinks that her own interests align with his on some level, he’s not sure how to gauge when his trust in her should be withdrawn.

Maybe, he thinks warily, this is the same debate that everyone else he knows has been having about him. He was taken from Reyna and Camp Jupiter and inserted into the lives of complete strangers. Reyna doesn’t necessarily know what the Greeks are planning for the Romans, and her wariness of them has now been extended to him. Even Thalia seemed like she had found a home with the Hunters and he was just a chapter in her life that had been closed the last time he saw her. Like he was an crossword puzzle that had just been _solved._

Jason’s on shaky trust levels with everyone in his life, isn’t he? Jason tries to lace his boots up again, but he accidentally pulls too hard and a shoelace breaks off from the boot. 

He must really be losing his Roman conscientiousness, Jason thinks irritably. “Ugh,” he says to no one in particular. If any of his old friends, Dakota or Leila or gods forbid Reyna ask him what happened to his boots, he may just tell them that they got caught on a bedpost or something. Back in Camp Jupiter, before Juno’s interventions, Jason had gone through the motions of the day like a well-oiled cog in the machine that was the Legion, but now he feels like he’s awkwardly out of place in his own former home. 

When Jason leaves his room and trudges downstairs, Annabeth is already standing with two guards flanking her, Jason’s bag of food lying near her feet. No guards have taken it upon themselves to escort him out of his room, and Jason feels a surge of anger at how they _do_ seem to see Annabeth as a prisoner-- not a guest, or a diplomat. He can still hear the old insult _graeca_ used in the camp. _He_ used to use it, on the rare occasions that he’d get to mess around with the others. Holding his head high, Jason strides forward and stands next to Annabeth, folding his arms around his chest to show that he’s taking her side. Annabeth looks a little worse for wear, with dark bags hanging under her eyes, but offers him a tired smile. She holds up another banana nut muffin, wordlessly. Jason blinks, then takes it.

“Thank you,” he whispers. One of the guards is watching Jason, he realizes. Then she clears her throat and says, “Leila will be meeting you shortly, along with Praetor Zhang. Dakota and Praetor Ramirez-Arellano will stay in Camp Jupiter.”

Reyna, Jason thinks. She’s acted warm but reserved ever since they reunited, and he’s worried for a brief moment that she may not even want to say goodbye. “Will they see us off?”

The guard tries to fight her knowing smile. “Praetor Ramirez-Arellano has asked to say farewell, yes.” 

Jason’s shoulders relax, and he breathes out a small, barely noticeable sigh of relief.

“May we go...sit down?” he asks, and the guards exchange a look, then one nods. “Please,” he says, “be our guests.”

Good old Roman hospitality, Jason thinks. It’s not necessarily a matter of being polite. The gods won’t like poor treatment of guests, and the guards must realize that.

Jason leads Annabeth to a bench on the far end of the room. When she sits down, her eyes look at the marble tile on the floor, and he wonders what she’s thinking about.

“How was your night?” he asks, and Annabeth bristles slightly, then tries to casually shrug. Jason briefly wonders if Melinoe listened to him warning her about messing with Annabeth, and he clenches his fist on top of the bench. Melinoe _needs_ to know not to double-cross him, he thinks. He can’t afford to seem like a weak-willed doormat to the goddess.

“How was yours?” she asks. “Mine was probably about the same…”

She sighs heavily, looking off to the side. Jason again has the feeling of being left out of something important, but he scolds himself for being put off by it. Annabeth shouldn’t feel obligated to be his best friend ever just like that, he knows, though he likes to think that she’s warmed up to him a little.

Looking back up to the rooms that they'd been housed in, Jason remembers how she'd looked at him during their conversation last night. Jason had been afraid to bring Thalia up to Annabeth for months, with Annabeth's initial skepticism of him and his own doubts about his sister. He hadn't really known what to expect when he did ask about her, but Annabeth hadn't recoiled or pulled away. Last night, she'd brought Thalia up herself, and she'd been sympathetic (in her own practical, Annabeth way). Jason's not sure how much more he'll want to discuss with Annabeth about Thalia in the future, but his chest feels oddly lighter after having talked to her.

Annabeth's eyes had been cold and calculating around Jason for months since they first met, but they'd been softer last evening. Like a dove feather instead of a slab of steel. And she'd hugged him-- that was a good sign. His cheeks feel a little warm as the sun rises through the window of the Principia, the morning wearing on.

And now Jason thinks of the handful of times Annabeth’s smiled at him, and smiles a little himself. She really has a nice smile, but she’s certainly frugal with them. So when she _does_ smile at you, it seems more meaningful than the normal kinds of pleasantries that people in New Rome engage in on a regular basis. Maybe that’s why he likes seeing it--

“What are you smiling about?” Annabeth asks, and when Jason looks at her, she’s not smiling right now. Instead her grey eyes are narrow and scrutinizing. Jason holds up a hand as he shrugs. 

“I’m just thinking about how,” he says, “um, I want to get back, and see the rest of the Argo II crew.”

Annabeth holds Jason’s gaze for another moment, as if to say _I’m not sure I believe you_ , but then she sighs again and laughs slightly. Even if she doesn’t completely believe him (he was telling a white lie) at least she doesn’t seem mad.

“I just hope they’re okay,” she says. “a lot can happen in a day or two.”

“With us, yeah,” Jason says, “that’s true.”

He pauses. Should he tell Annabeth about Melinoe now? The guards flanking them might not take well to the idea of a Greek goddess who sided with Kronos having conversations with Jason in his dreams. And maybe Annabeth has met her, too. Besides Reyna, Jason thinks, Annabeth is probably the first person he’d want to tell about Melinoe’s deal. She’s smart, and she knows about the Greek gods firsthand. But he’ll tell her in private, when his words can’t be misconstrued. 

So right now, all Jason says is, “But I trust them.” And he means it-- he _does_ trust Piper and Leo, and he _knows_ that he’ll see them again soon. The realization makes him feel stronger, and beside him, Annabeth offers Jason a small, covert smile, and sits up straighter, too. She feels emboldened by his words as well, but doesn’t tell him that right now.

____

Frank and Reyna appear at 7:30 sharp, perfectly punctual as praetors should be. Guards walk on either side of them, and trailing behind at a respectful distance are two older teenagers in Roman uniforms as well. 

Dakota and Leila. Jason grins as Dakota comes up to slap him on the back. “Jason!” he says, his breath smelling a bit like spiked strawberry Kool-Aid, “how were the _graecas_ treating you?”

Annabeth stiffens beside Jason, and he says quickly, “Don’t call them that, Dakota. And Camp Halfblood was actually great to see.”

Dakota raises an eyebrow, then turns and holds out a hand to Annabeth. “Son of Bacchus,” she says, shaking, and he says, “What tipped you off?”

Annabeth’s nose is wrinkled. “It was...a lucky guess, I think.”

Thankfully, Dakota seems a little too soused to pick up on Annabeth’s sarcasm, and he beckons for Leila to come over. Leila smiles as she shakes Jason’s hand.

“It’s so good to see you again,” she murmurs, “and to see that you’re okay. I was thinking that if you need any help navigating the foliage, it would be quickest if I came with you.”

“Why?” Annabeth asks, and Leila turns to her. 

“Well,” she says, “I’m the daughter of Ceres-- a harvest goddess. I have a sense for nature, flora. The Earth…”

Her eyes flicker for a moment. “...in general,” she finishes with another serene smile.

Annabeth gives Jason a look, although he can’t really decipher it. “Thank you for your cooperation,” he says, “really, Leila. Thank you.”

Leila smiles and stands beside Jason while Dakota goes back to Reyna’s side. Frank comes forward. 

“I…” he says, looking at the Annabeth, Jason, and Leila in turn, “I hope that I can be of service.”

“Praetor,” Leila says, “that’s far too humble of you.”

Frank blushes, but smiles. “Not at all.” Dakota snorts in the background, and when Jason looks up, Reyna is giving him a death glare. Then her eyes turn to him, and her whole face softens. 

But when she comes up to Jason, her posture is formal. “We will do everything in our power to help your cause, Praetor Grace,” she says, and Jason swallows hard. Reyna used to be sweeter on him than she is now, maybe too sweet for his liking-- at least at first. But he isn’t happy with how distant she seems to be this morning. 

“Reyna,” he says, “thank you for hearing me.”

He can just see a shimmer in Reyna’s dark eyes as they begin to water, but she only nods. 

“Well,” she says now, straightening her shoulders, “we have a vehicle with celestial bronze, imperial gold, extra ambrosia and unicorn shavings, and basic naval supplies ready for you. I will see you out.”

___

“So,” Jason says, turning to Annabeth with a hint of a smile on his face, “this will be our ride.”

“A minivan?” Annabeth asks, and he can barely hold back a chuckle before he shakes his head.

“No,” he says, “a Mitsubishi Chariot.”

“A pun,” Annabeth says, although she doesn’t seem all that impressed. “Is that why Jupiter uses it?”

“We use cars and other multipurpose vehicles,” Leila says, cutting in. Her black hair is tied up in a ponytail. “But this one is my favorite. Who says that the praetors don’t have a sense of humor?”

“I did,” Frank says, “before I became one. I call shotgun, by the way.” 

Leila climbs into the driver’s seat, and the smell of gold and bronze are overpowering when Jason climbs into the backseat, Annabeth sliding in beside him. 

“Who here can drive?” Leila says. Annabeth’s hand goes up. Frank laughs, and says, “I was a little too busy fighting off Giants to get my license.”

“Well,” Leila says, “if something happens to me, you have to take over, Chase.”

Annabeth opens and closes her mouth, then whispers to Jason, “Is she joking?”

“Yes and no,” says Jason. “She’s joking, but it’s also true. Although Leila’s going to be the first choice driver for a car like this.” 

“Leila,” Annabeth says, looking slightly peeved. “Is there anything else that’s up with this car?”

“What do you mean?” asks Leila, checking her makeup in the rearview mirror. Annabeth gestures to the area surrounding them.

“Well, I mean,” she says, “how will it find a stranded trireme sitting in the middle of California? Is it modified for offroad terrain?”

Leila giggles, and then looks at Annabeth. “Dear child of Athena,” she says, “I don’t know what Demeter’s children are like, but offroad terrain isn’t going to be a problem for me. This car's been made for the children of Ceres-- it gives us an extra, erm, boost.” 

“Time for Leila’s Earth Magic roller coaster ride,” Frank says, “hang on tight, Annabeth.” 

“Not yet, Praetor Zhang,” Leila says. Then she starts the engine and the Chariot revves into motion.

___

Annabeth is tense for the several minutes of totally mundane driving through the Caldecott tunnel. Jason nudges her, and she glances up at him for a moment. He feels his face grow slightly warm when he sees her features in the soft light of the tunnel-- her grey eyes shine and look almost like silver drachma. _This is not the time to be checking out girls, Jason,_ a little voice in his head thinks, _especially not girls whose boyfriends have been kidnapped by an evil Earth goddess._

“What’s up?” she asks. Jason shrugs, casually. Or he thinks he’s being casual. He hopes he’s being casual. 

“You just seemed...” he says, “...I just wanted to know if you were doing alright.” Annabeth nods, looking out the window.

“I hope that…” she says, and sighs. “I’m doing as alright as I can be.”

Jason wants to kick himself internally. Their friends are stranded in the middle of nowhere, one of his old comrades is wandering around the underworld, and Annabeth’s boyfriend is being held captive by Gaea too. Of course she’s not doing alright, but not doing alright seems to be pretty normal for everyone these days. 

“We’re in this together,” Jason murmurs to her, “and we’re going to find them again. We won’t give up on Hazel, or Percy.” He himself obviously doesn’t _know_ Percy, but the guy’s absence was felt so strongly in Camp Halfblood that Jason could always feel the collective grief of the campers. Some of it even may have worn off on him, too, especially when he sees Annabeth’s face. Percy’s been lost. Jason knows about loss, and about _being_ lost.

“Thank you,” Annabeth says, “are _you_ doing alright?”

Jason sighs. “As alright as _I_ can be. Thanks for asking.”

Frank looks over at the two of them in the back, and seems like he wants to say something. But instead he keeps his eyes on the tunnel ahead of them.

“It won’t be long now,” Frank says, “Leila will need you guys to point her in the right direction. At least at first, is that alright?” 

“North of the Golden Gate bridge,” Jason says, and Frank nods. 

“We might need more specific directions than that,” he says, although his tone sounds resigned rather than accusational.

“I’ll-- we’ll do our best to help,” Annabeth says. 

“Quiet, please,” Leila says, “I’m almost out of the tunnel.” 

Soon, bright daylight hits Jason’s face. To his right and left, tall mountains flank the Chariot. Leila looks for a spot to pull over. 

“So,” she says, hopping out of the car. “Jason, Annabeth, follow me, please.”

Jason gets out of the backseat, and Annabeth follows him, looking slightly puzzled but more intrigued than anything. 

Leila sits down in the dirt, cross-legged. She closes her eyes, like she’s meditating. Jason stands beside her, and Annabeth across from her, hugging her arms together.

“North, is what you say?” Leila says, eyes still closed. 

"Yeah," Annabeth says. She looks at Jason, who explains, "Leila's experienced with nature magic."

“Trireme…” Leila murmurs. “Any specific kind of wood? Cotton sheets? Anything that the dryads around it would notice? Yikes, the karpoi are _feisty_ today.”

“Er, teak wood,” Annabeth says, “definitely. And the decor in the cabins were cedar-- good weather and rot resistance. I think there were cotton sheets.”

“Hmmm…” Leila murmurs, and the grass ripples around her, although the breeze is very slight. Annabeth looks around, mesmerized by the scenery’s response to Leila. 

“Yes,” Leila says, “yes, we’re on our way to help you.”

“Wait,” Jason says, “who are you speaking to?”

Leila shushes him. “Thank you. Yes, Jason and Annabeth… And my name is Leila. I’m the Centurion of the Fourth Cohort. Our male Praetor has also accompanied us. Alright, see you soon. Bye.”

She opens her eyes. Annabeth looks at her, her mouth hanging open slightly. “Your satyr friend knows some nature magic,” is all Leila says.

“Hedge is _awake?_ ” Jason asks, and Annabeth nods in tandem. “Someone put him to sleep before we left,” she says.

“Well,” Leila says, “he’s awake now. And Piper and Leo are doing fine.”

She speaks the names as if she knows Piper and Leo herself, with utter nonchalance. Then Leila gets up and matter-of-factly brushes herself off. “Time for the roller coaster ride. Everyone, buckle in.”

“What do you think happened while we were gone?” Annabeth asks Jason when they’re in the backseat of the Chariot again. Jason shrugs.

“Anything from Hedge just waking up all of a sudden to Piper and Leo defeating an apocalypse dragon,” he says. “I imagine.”

Her mouth quirks up in a half-smile. “You have a bit of a dry sense of humor, Grace.”

Jason smiles back slightly. Leila, watching them, breaks into a grin, gestures to the backseat with her head and gives Frank a knowing wink. Frank rolls his eyes. 

“Just do the earthbender thing, Leila,” he says, and Leila sighs.

“Alright,” she says, “hold on for one moment, please.”

Then the mountain opens up to reveal another tunnel, and the Chariot enters darkness once more.

_____

“Leila,” Annabeth tries to keep her voice steady, but her breath catches when the Chariot takes a sharp turn downwards, skidding along a bumpy path at top speed, trees and foliage veering aside to make way for it. “How do you stay focused on-- the trireme? How-- how do you know where to go?”

Leila sighs. “It may be better to talk later,” she says, “about all the mechanics. But I guess you could say that the earth talks to me. Ceres is very involved with us mortals. She has these helpers that prepare the earth for her before harvest, and with the Chariot I can kind of mold it, too.”

 _"Kind of,"_ Frank says. 

Annabeth glances at Jason, who knows what she’s thinking. _How would Gaea awakening factor into that?_ But now is probably not a good time to bring that up to Leila. Annabeth lies her head back in the backseat of the car and looks up at the ceiling. 

“Why…” she says, then leans over casually so that her head is near Jason’s, although it looks like she’s just letting it loll to the side. She whispers to him, “Why do you think the trireme got ruined in the first place? Who was manipulating Leo-- us? What did they stand to gain?”

Jason is uneasy. That may have been a good question for Melinoe. He glances over at Annabeth, and then at Leila and Frank ahead of them. Frank looks slightly nauseous, gripping the car door, and Leila is calmly maneuvering the Chariot through another maze of shrubs and foliage at breakneck speed.

“I might have a way to find out,” he says, “but let’s talk about it later.”

Annabeth raises her eyebrows at him, but says nothing. In the front seat, Leila is still focused on driving, but Jason catches Frank’s worried look before Frank coughs and turns away.

___

An empty can of Mountain Dew rolls around the Chariot floor as Jason struggles to keep his breakfast in, in spite of taking the Meni-D Frank had offered to them an hour into the ride. Beside him, Annabeth has clasped a hand to her mouth and looks slightly queasy. Frank turns around, sees their faces, and turns back to Leila, who speaks before he can say anything.

“Frank,” she says, “it’s alright. We’re almost there.”

“Are you sure?” Frank says, “define ‘almost’.”

“Three,” Leila says. At the moment, the Chariot is careening along a raised plot of land that gives Jason a canopy view of the ground beneath them. No big trireme in the middle of nowhere, though. 

“Two,” Leila says, then the land takes a sharp downturn. Annabeth gives Jason a nervous side-eye that needs no translation: “please, gods, no.” Jason laughs aloud and Annabeth rolls her eyes but says nothing.

“One,” Leila says, and the Chariot begins its steep descent down from the sky.

Frank grips the side of the car seat tightly but keeps his mouth closed. Annabeth squeezes her eyes shut and presses her hand to her mouth again, but after a moment she opens one eye to scan the scenery flashing around them. 

And Jason? Jason’s never exactly had a fear of heights, and he nudges Annabeth (who has summoned the courage to open both eyes now) with a smile. “What do you think?”

“I-I’ve flown before,” Annabeth says, although she looks a little pale in the face. Before he can ask her if she feels alright, she quickly follows up with, “How about you?”

“Uh, it would be better if I could open a window,” he says after a pause, “but I don’t think Leila would be thrilled about--”

The Chariot stops short, and both Annabeth and Jason are flung forward in their seats. “Gods!” Annabeth shrieks, and Jason’s elbow accidentally hits Frank’s shoulder. 

“Sorry, Praetor,” he says, rubbing his elbow. Frank winces. 

“Uh, it’s alright, Praetor,” he says in turn, massaging his shoulder.

“Praetor, Praetor,” Leo’s voice calls out from outside the Chariot. “is ‘praetor’ Latin for ‘dude’?”

“Leo!” Jason says, and Leo’s grinning, elflike face comes into view, with Piper trailing behind him. Her smile is muted, and Jason’s not quite sure what she’s thinking. 

“Hey, guys,” Leo says, then he turns to Frank and Leila and grins. “and hey, new guys.”

“Praetor is the highest rank in Camp Jupiter during peace times,” Frank says as he and Leila open their car doors. “I am Praetor Frank Zhang.” 

“Leo Valdez,” says Leo, shaking Frank’s hand vigorously. He gestures over to Piper with his head. “And that’s Piper.”

“Piper McLean,” Piper says, shaking Frank’s hand. Frank seems slightly put off that they did not drop to their knees and bow to him, but he shakes their hands nevertheless.

“Hello,” he says. Leila smiles and shakes their hands in turn. “Leila Graham. Centurion of the Fourth Cohort.”

Leo and Piper exchange a glance, and Jason can see Leila blush slightly when she realizes how meaningless the term must be to them. 

“She’s a big deal,” he says, and Leila smiles over at him. “No, being a praetor is a big deal, Praetor Grace.”

Piper’s strained, too-cheery voice breaks in. “So you’re a, um, praetor now, Jason?”

When Jason glances over at her, she seems like she’s trying hard to act too casual. She smiles at him, far too sweet and deliberate for it to be a genuine Piper smile.

“Well,” Jason says, trying to smile back. “no, I just _was_ one. Frank here replaced me.”

There’s an awkward pause before Leo breaks in and says, “Oh, so do you guys have to fight to the death or something to figure out who’s the real praetor?”

Then Leo glances covertly at Piper, who quickly looks away and begins talking to Annabeth. Jason feels his skin prickle when he catches them glancing his way out of the corner of his eye. He and Piper had ended things amicably. They’d _agreed_ on that. He thought that he’d heard Piper say as much in the infirmary-- and so had Annabeth. But the last night they’d been together had been, well, a bit embarrassing for them both. Now Piper seems to have a hard time _looking_ at Jason, and the idea that she might still hold some lingering anger or resentment makes him feel horrible. 

_As_ does the idea that Annabeth might end up thinking poorly of him too. Jason feels a pang of guilt all of a sudden. Did he lead Piper on? Is she still in pain? And did _he_ hurt her, was there something he could have or should have done to prevent this?

“No,” Jason says now. “I think we’re a bit too preoccupied to have a gladiator battle at the moment.”

Leo’s eyes widen. “So do you _normally_ have--”

 _”Cupcakes!”_ says Hedge, coming towards them. “How are you? Who is Leila--”

“I’m Leila,” Leila says, standing and reaching a hand out to Hedge. “Leila Graham, Centurion of the Fourth Cohort.”

“Gleeson Hedge,” Hedge says, catching her hand firmly, “I’m assigned to protect these demigods here, from Camp Halfblood.”

His eyes narrow when he looks at Leila, and she draws her hand back slightly. Jason knows Leila, and she’s one of the nicest people in the world. Hedge’s reaction takes him by surprise, but there must still be some bad blood between the Greeks and Romans. Hopefully Leila and Frank will be amiable enough to smooth things over.

“So,” Jason says, “how did you wake up?”

Hedge looks at Leo, who just shrugs with a tense expression. “I don’t know how I woke up,” Hedge says, “I just...did.”

“Did anyone wake you up?” Jason asks, and he’s thinking something along the lines of black-and-white ghost goddess of the underworld, but Hedge shrugs. “Leo did, with his incredibly loud renovations of the ship.”

“Renovations,” Leo snorts, “more like repairs. Because Argo II is, you know, broken.”

“If you spend an hour trying to figure out whether or not you can improve the ship’s dubstep soundboard, I’m calling it renovations, cupcake.”

“That’s not fair!” Leo insists. “I didn’t have what I needed to work on much besides the soundboards. Celestial bronze, for example, you can’t go and buy that at the local Lowe’s.”

“We have supplies with us here,” says Annabeth, looking up from the far side of the clearing they’ve landed in. Piper stands next to her, fiddling with her braid again. She avoids Jason’s gaze. And Leo’s. “Celestial bronze, imperial gold, lime and tar. You’ll have what you need, but how much time will it take before we’re back in business?”

Leo waves his hand. He glances back at Piper, who’s now looking at the Mitsubishi Chariot. “Uh, after this?" he says, still looking at Piper before averting his gaze. "A day or two. I’ve done what I can, Pipes tried to help. But Argo II’s kind of wrecked.”

He says “a day or two” like it’s an eternity, Jason thinks. Leo looks at Annabeth. “Can you help out with the repairs? You kind of know engineering.”

“Yeah,” Annabeth says, although she doesn’t look all that happy with Leo’s faint praise. “let’s get situated first, though. We have a fair amount to tell you guys.”

 _And I have even more to tell you._ Jason thinks, remembering Melinoe’s words.

They begin to head back to the campsite that Leo and Piper have set up underneath Argo II. “Closer to Argo II’s proximity the better,” Piper explains to Frank and Leila, “it’s been designed to keep us from attracting monsters.”

“Besides Hedge,” Leo whispers, jostling Jason in the shoulder. Jason looks at Hedge, who is glancing covertly at Leila and Frank, his expression again wary. Then he catches Jason’s eye and averts his gaze. Frank may have questions for Jason later, too.

Jason sighs to himself. Trust may be hard to give out, but he’s starting to feel the strain of distrust everywhere. Lupa’s words come back to him as the group make their way into the tent area under Argo II’s shadow, long and stretching out across the yellow sunset.


End file.
